+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 36, February 27, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 36 CONTENTS. SECTION ONE: New references. What's new at the Web Design Reference site? http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/ New links in these categories: 01: ACCESSIBILITY. 02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: PHP. 09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 10: TOOLS. 11: TYPOGRAPHY. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Kevin Miller By Kevin Miller. "My brother passed away at the age of 23 because of a design choice in a video game. As an epileptic, especially one who had photo-sensitive seizures in the past, he knew that gaming carried with it a risk; but that risk was exacerbated by someone wanting a strobe effect here or a flashing explosion there....Web sites are now expected to work on a wide array of devices and screen resolutions, but somehow screen readers and magnifiers are never listed as a 'device' when speaking about responsive design. Developers are working on touch-friendly interfaces, when we still have web applications that are not accessible to someone using only a keyboard, or using foot pedals as a pointing device..." https://the-pastry-box-project.net/kevin-miller/2014-February-24 The Struggle for Web eQuality by Persons with Cognitive Disabilities By Peter Blanck. "This article is based on the book eQuality: The Struggle for Web Accessibility by Persons with Cognitive Disabilities (2014, Cambridge University Press). It contends that the rights of individuals with cognitive disabilities to equal access to web content are not only protected under law, but may also be implemented and supported by current user-based, semantic and cloud technologies..." http://bbi.syr.edu/news_events/news/2014/02/WebEquality_Blanck.html Provide Long Descriptions for Complex Images Using Longdesc By Denis Boudreau. "Make sure complex images are assigned longdesc attributes that lead to full text descriptions. " http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/77707865445/provide-long-descriptions-for-complex-images-using 1.1.1 Non-Text Content By Rakesh Paladugula. "Images, charts, graphs, audio/video content, etc are considered as non-text content. People with certain disabilities will not be able to perceive the information conveyed through non-text content unless an alternate way is provided to convey the same..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/02/1-1-1-non-text-content/ Doesn't Work in Lynx By Steve Faulkner. "I regularly encounter the argument that a particular feature is not accessible because it doesn't work in a text browser such as Lynx..." http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/02/doesnt-work-lynx/ Inaccessible Cyber Streetwise Website By Leonie Watson. "The Cyber Streetwise website was launched by the UK Home Office in January. Developed by Nudge Digital, Cyber Streetwise is a high profile website intended to change attitudes towards online security. It is also a complete travesty when it comes to accessibility. " http://tink.co.uk/2014/02/inaccessible-cyber-streetwise-website/ Mobile Accessibility Guidelines By British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). "The BBC Standards and Guidelines for Mobile Accessibility are a set of technology agnostic best practices for mobile web content, hybrid and native apps. " http://www.bbc.co.uk/guidelines/futuremedia/accessibility/mobile Designing for Accessibility (Video) By Laura Kalbag. Laura Kalbag's presentation at a 2-day not-for-profit by-the-community and for-the-community international conference in Lisbon, Portugal, October 2-3, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOM5eY5hG-Q +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS - When to Use Generated Content By Jens O. Meiert. "...Generated content should not be used for actual content, like copy text or important messages..." http://meiert.com/en/blog/20140224/generated-content/ Float Labels With CSS By Chris Coyier. "You've probably seen this pattern going around. It's an input that appears as if it has placeholder text in it, but when you click/tap into that input, that text moves out of the way and allows you to type there. It's rather clever, I think. Brad Frost has a really good post on it, detailing the pros and cons and such..." http://css-tricks.com/float-labels-css/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Everything You Know About Accessibility Testing is Wrong, Part 2 By Karl Groves. "...Current automatic accessibility testing practices take place at the wrong place and wrong time and is done by the wrong people..." http://www.karlgroves.com/2014/02/20/everything-you-know-about-accessibility-testing-is-wrong-part-2/ +04: EVENTS. Global Accessibility Awareness Day Correction: This event is May 15, 2014 not May 9. Everywhere. http://www.globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org/ HTML5 Developer Conference May 19-23, 2014. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://html5devconf.com/index.html Future Insights Live June 16-20, 2014. Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. http://futureinsightslive.com/las-vegas-2014/ SmashingConf New York June 17-18, 2014. New York, New York, U.S.A. http://smashingconf.com/ny-2014/ WebVisions Barcelona June 19-22, 2014. Barcelona, Spain http://www.webvisionsevent.com/barcelona/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Intranet Information Architecture (IA) Trends By Marieke McCloskey. "Intranets are improving findability and discoverability by organizing content by task rather than department, using megamenus to present deep content, offering clear cues to help orient users, and providing shortcuts to important pages and tools." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/intranet-information-architecture-ia/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Coding Accessibility - An Interview with Steve Faulkner By Sarah Horton. "Steve Faulkner has been an accessibility engineer since 2001, first with Vision Australia and currently with The Paciello Group. He has a hand in developing HTML5 and WAI-ARIA specifications as a member of W3C working groups, and is editor of W3C specifications on HTML5, Using ARIA in HTML, accessibility APIs, and text alternatives. In short, Steve has accessibility chops. Because much of what's needed is beneath the surface of a page, we asked Steve to explain what user experience designers should know about how code supports accessibility. " http://rosenfeldmedia.com/blogs/a-web-for-everyone/coding-accessibility-an-interview-with-steve-faulkner/ +07: NAVIGATION. Making Accessible Links - 15 Golden Rules For Developers By Gian Wild. "Rule 1: Don't use the word 'link' in your links..." http://www.sitepoint.com/15-rules-making-accessible-links/ The Magnifying-Glass Icon in Search Design By Katie Sherwin. "Users recognize a magnifying-glass icon as meaning 'search' even without a textual label. The downside is that icon-only search is harder for users to find." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/magnifying-glass-icon/ +08: PHP. PHP Coding Standards Cheat Sheet By David Child. "The PHP Coding Standards Cheat Sheet is a reference for the current batch of PSR standards from the PHP-FIG standards group." http://www.addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/php-coding-standards-cheat-sheet/ +09: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Comments on W3C TAG EME By Henri Sivonen. "...it is technically correct that EME involves 'encrypted' content, but talking about encryption evokes the wrong connotations about who the adversary is. (Typically, encryption is used against a third party on the network. In the case of EME, the user is the adversary against whom encryption is used.) Describing the 'aim' of EME without saying 'DRM' up front is grossly misleading. Furthermore, saying that the 'aim' of EME is to 'enable sharing of encrypted content' is Newspeakish, when the stated goal of DRM is to *disable* sharing of content..." http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tag/2014Feb/0057.html +10: TOOLS. Fount By Nathan Ford. "Fount will tell you which web font in your font-stack you are actually seeing - not just what is supposed to be seen. It'll also tell you the font size, weight, and style..." http://fount.artequalswork.com/ +11: TYPOGRAPHY. Making Text Legible -Designing for People with Partial Sight By Aries Arditi. "Here are basic guidelines for making effective legibility choices that work for nearly everyone..." http://www.lighthouse.org/accessibility/design/accessible-print-design/making-text-legible Cross-Browser Web Fonts, part 3 - Hyphens, Text Rendering, and Font Feature Settings By Chris Mills. "Widespread browser support for @font-face has done wonders for web typography, allowing us the freedom to use custom fonts wherever we want. But different fonts are not the whole story with web typography. There are other things that the web has long been weak at, such as proper hyphenation of long words, and usage of open type font features such as ligature and stylistic swashes that often get locked away inside font files and never see the light of day. In this article we will look at some of these new CSS font features..." http://www.sitepoint.com/cross-browser-web-fonts-part-3/ Typography Cheat Sheet - The 6 Big Mistakes to Avoid By Simone Sala. "Typography is one of those strange skills - too mathematical to be pure art, but a touch too intangible to be pure science..." http://www.sitepoint.com/typography-cheat-sheet/ +12: USABILITY. What Senior Citizens Taught Me About Designing Apps By Eden Rohatensky. "Problems that were presented when trying to do simple tasks such as adding a friend to their contacts, or finding their email accounts, repeated themselves quite frequently. This was a result of quite a few patterns repeating themselves in the design of the user interfaces of the apps that were used. This list might seem like it's obvious to many, but might be useful (or at least anecdotal evidence for already quantified data)..." http://edenrohatensky.com/what-senior-citizens-taught-me-about-designing-apps/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? Accessibility Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/accessibility.html Association Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/associations.html Book Listings. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/books.html Cascading Style Sheets Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/css.html Color Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/color.html Dreamweaver Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/dreamweaver.html Evaluation & Testing Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/testing.html Event Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/events.html Flash Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/flash.html Information Architecture Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/architecture.html JavaScript Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/javascript.html Miscellaneous Web Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/misc.html Navigation Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/navigation.html PHP Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/php.html Sites & Blogs Listing. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/standards.html Tool Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/tools.html Typography Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/type.html Usability Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/usability.html XML Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/xml.html [Section two ends.] ++END NOTES. + SUBSCRIPTION INFO. WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/webdev_listserv.html The Web Design Reference Site also has a RSS 2.0 feed for site updates. + TEXT EMAIL NEWSLETTER (TEN). As a navigation aid for screen readers we do our best to conform to the accessible Text Email Newsletter (TEN) guidelines. Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to make navigation easier. For TEN guideline information please visit: http://www.headstar.com/ten + SIGN OFF. Until next time, Laura L. Carlson Information Technology Systems and Services University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009 mailto:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]