+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 43, April 17, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 43 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: DRUPAL. 03: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: JAVASCRIPT. 05: TOOLS. 06: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 07: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Short Note on alt in HTML By Steve Faulkner. "It is no longer a WCAG 2.0 conformance failure to have an without an alt attribute, as long as the img element has an accessible name provided using another method such as aria-label. It is still a conformance error in HTML to have an without an alt attribute (unless the img has a caption provided using the figure and figcaption elements)..." http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/04/short-note-alt/ Clearing Up Summary By Dennis Lembree. "The summary attribute is a 'classic' method to describe data tables to screen readers users. It's mentioned in Section 508 and even in WCAG 2.0 technique H73. But this technique is outdated and I haven't recommended its use for a while now..." http://www.webaxe.org/clearing-up-summary/ Control the Visual Presentation of Text Using CSS By Denis Boudreau. "Make sure the presentation of text is handled through CSS, not HTML..." http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/82592559857/control-the-visual-presentation-of-text-using-css Provide a Text Alternative Describing the Purpose of the CAPTCHA By Denis Boudreau. "Make sure CAPTCHAs have text alternatives that describe their purpose..." http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/82753858464/provide-a-text-alternative-describing-the-purpose-of Provide Alternate Audio CAPTCHAs to Support Visual CAPTCHA Tasks By Denis Boudreau. "Make sure alternate audio CAPTCHAs are also provided and serve the same purpose..." http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/82890796420/provide-alternate-audio-captchas-to-support-visual Accessibility Considerations for Online Courses By Janet Sylvia. "The growth and popularity of online courses is at an all-time high. In the five years to 2012, the online education market in Australia grew by almost 20% and was valued at US$4.68 billion..." http://www.accessiq.org/news/news/2014/04/accessibility-considerations-for-online-courses CVAA for Fostering Innovation and Change By Sarah Horton. "CVAA is short for the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. It's a U.S. law that was signed into effect by President Obama in October 2010, for the purpose of ensuring that accessibility requirements keep pace with advances in communication technologies. Title I: Communications Access covers communication services and equipment and Title II: Video Programming covers media accessibility. Both require communication and video manufacturers and service providers to address the needs of people with disabilities in their products and services..." http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/04/cvaa-fostering-innovation-change/ Global Considerations in Creating an Organizational Web Accessibility Policy By David Sloan. "TPGÕs Accessible User Experience team recently did some work for a client exploring legislation and standards on digital accessibility in selected countries around the world, and their impact on defining an organizational accessibility policy for globally-active organizations..." http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/04/global-considerations-creating-organizational-web-accessibility-policy/ Empathy By Wendy Chisholm. "I had a great lunch with Dylan on Friday and he tweeted afterward: 'UX and accessibility both have empathy as a core value. So why don't UX and #a11y work together more?'..." http://sp1ral.com/2014/04/empathy/ +02: DRUPAL. Contributing to Drupal, the Nomensa Way By Michel Vloon. "Here at Nomensa we have accessibility at the heart, so when we get granted time in our schedule to work on contributing modules to the Drupal community, our first choice was to look into contributing modules that could raise the standard of accessibility across Drupal..." http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2014/contributing-to-drupal-the-nomensa-way/ PA11Y Integration By Michel Vloon. "The PA11Y Integration module acts as a client for a PA11Y webservice. A pa11y-webservice provides scheduled accessibility reports for multiple URLs. It runs pa11y on a list of URLs, which you can update and query the results of via a JSON web-service." https://drupal.org/project/pa11y_integration A Local Programmer's Life-Changing Software for Internet Accessibility By Sara Rubin. "...Now Acquia, along with the Quality Institute Dutch Municipalities (the agency that manages websites for the government of the Netherlands), have taken the lead on getting Quail perfected. Quail will be integrated into Drupal version 7, meaning all websites built with Drupal - which include powerhouses like whitehouse.gov and energy.gov - will have Quail built in for accessibility when they upgrade from the current version..." http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/archives/2014/0403/a-local-programmer-s-life-changing-software-for-internet-accessibility/article_edcc05b0-ba9f-11e3-975f-001a4bcf6878.html +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Identifying the 3 Types of Missing Data By Jeff Sauro. "How concerned should you be with missing responses in your survey?..." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/missing-data.php +04: EVENTS. Importance of Color Accessibility Webinar April 24, 2014. http://easi.cc/clinic.htm#april +05: JAVASCRIPT. The Maximum Call Stack Size By Axel Rauschmayer. "Are you curious what the maximum call stack size of your JavaScript engine is? The following function lets you find out..." http://www.2ality.com/2014/04/call-stack-size.html JavaScript Touch/Pointer Events Research Notes - Screenreaders, Faked Mouse Events, Touchscreens By Patrick H. Lauke. "Over the last two years I've been dabbling with various aspects related to the handling of touch events and pointer events - specifically trying to determine which events are being dispatched by browsers as a result of touchscreen interactions, and what the repercussions of this are considering the increasing number of multi-input devices (such as laptops that feature both traditional keyboard/mouse/trackpad as well as a touchscreen, or nominally touch-only devices such as smartphones and tablets, but paired with a bluetooth mouse/keyboard)..." http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/04/javascript-touchpointer-events-research-notes-screenreaders-faked-mouse-events-touchscreens/ ARIA-Controls By Rakesh Paladugula. "ARIA-controls property provide a relation between a parent element and the child element..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/04/aria-controls/ +06 TOOLS. WCAG Contrast Checker (FireFox Extension) By Jorge Rumoroso. "Checks for compliance with the contrast levels, brightness and shine in the color combination of foreground and background of textual content based on the requirements of WCAG 1 and WCAG 2..." https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/wcag-contrast-checker/ HeadingsMap (FireFox Extension) By Jorge Rumoroso. "The extension generates a documentmap or index of any web document structured with headings and/or with sections in HTML 5. It shows the headings structure, the errors in the structure (ie. incorrect levels), and it works as HTML5 Outliner tool.." https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/headingsmap/ +07: USABILITY. Kill Your Conversion Killing Carousel Now By W Craig Tomlin. "...Kill your conversion killing carousels now, before more damage is done to your website ROI and revenue. The good news is among over 50 websites I sampled, slightly less than a quarter are still using carousels, with the vast majority either removing them entirely, or using a modified version where the carousel is below the main home page image and message." http://www.usefulusability.com/kill-conversion-killing-carousels-now/ Scaling User Interfaces - An Information-Processing Approach to Multi-Device Design By Raluca Budiu. "Designing for all screen sizes must consider the capacity of the human-device communication channel, which depends on users' memory, device portability, and screen size..." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/scaling-user-interfaces/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +08: 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.]