+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 51, June 12, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 51 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: DRUPAL. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: FLASH. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Articulating and Advocating for Accessibility By Matt May. "Tech workers should be advocating for accessibility - how to get started and what to expect." http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/articulating-and-advocating-for-accessibility Blocking Comment Spam Without Captchas By Daniel Davis. "Imagine you want to leave a comment on a blog. Next, imagine you have to solve one of those captchas Ñ a jumbled image of letters and numbers - to prove youÕre human. Now imagine that you can't see..." http://daniemon.com/blog/block-comment-spam-without-captchas/ Data Tables Do Not Always Need Markup for Header Cells? By Sailesh Panchang. "...That statement in the HTML5 specs that suggests some data tables do not need any header markup is ominous. I believe this will encourage content authors / developers to take liberties while marking up any data table and simply say they believe the table does not need any row/column header markup or caption/summary etc and point to this puzzle as an example." http://www.deque.com/blog/data-tables-markup-header-cells/ Audio Description (AD) By BarrierBreak. "Audio description (AD) is the narration describing the body language, expressions and movements present in the video. It gives the information about the things that we might not be able to see or which we may overlook. Audio Description actually describes what is happening on the screen at that point of time. A separate audio description track added to the original video..." http://accessiblemedia.barrierbreak.com/audio-description-ad-video/ Justice Department Reaches Settlement with Florida State University By Global Accessibility News. "...Under the settlement, FSU agrees to ensure...that the FSU Police Department website, including its employment opportunities website and its mobile applications, conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level AA Success Criteria and other Conformance Requirements (WCAG 2.0 AA)..." http://globalaccessibilitynews.com/2014/06/06/justice-department-reaches-settlement-with-florida-state-university/ Accessibility Regulation Confusion from U.S. Government By Adrian Roselli. "... Keep coding (or start coding) your sites to meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level A and AA Success Criteria. This is the requirement the DoJ put in its ruling against H&R Block, the most recent example we have of where the federal government is defining a standard. And then stop worrying. As WebAIM notes, fear of litigation isn't the best reason to make a site accessible. You should do it because it's the right thing to do. Of course, in my HTML5 Developer Conference talk, I argue that making accessibility all about you (slide 13) is probably a more effective means of getting developers to implement..." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/06/accessibility-regulation-confusion-from.html Department of Justice Clarifies Process for Upcoming ADA Web Regulations By Ken Nakata. "In a series of announcements at the very end of last month, the US Justice Department (DOJ) divided the rulemaking for its upcoming ADA Web accessibility regulations into two rulemaking efforts: one for private sector and one for public sector. It also announced that the private sector NPRM (notice of proposed rulemaking) will be delayed until March 2015..." http://blog.hisoftware.com/2014/accessibility/department-of-justice-clarifies-process-for-upcoming-ada-web-regulations Websites Hit with Demand Letters on Accessibility Issues Despite Courts' Rejection of Claim By David McDowell. "In recent weeks, numerous businesses have received letters asserting that their websites are not accessible to persons with disabilities, in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and California - Unruh Act. These letters threaten litigation and warn of large penalty claims under the Unruh Act. What these letters do not report is that California courts have repeatedly rejected claims that the ADA and Unruh require accessible websites, including a recent dismissal order from Judge David Carter of the Central District of California..." http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/websites-hit-with-demand-letters-on-acce-88625/ Structured Negotiations and Mobile Access By The Law Office of Lainey Feingold. "The companies listed below have worked in collaboration with the blind community Ñ without any lawsuits Ñ to improve the accessibility and usability of their mobile content..." http://lflegal.com/2014/06/mobile-access/ Thoughts on Professional Accreditation in Digital Accessibility By David Sloan. "...I appreciate that mine is a perception looking from outside, and my views may be very unrepresentative of accessibility professionals in general. Regardless, I want to be part of an IAAP that prioritises education of the many over certification of the few. We should be draining the floodwaters, not pulling up the gangway and sailing our boat away from those left behind." http://58sound.com/2014/06/10/thoughts-on-professional-accreditation-in-digital-accessibility/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Are We Getting too Sassy? By Ashley Nolan. "...Are we abusing the power of Sass to perform pre-processing micro optimisations that shouldn't be done in the first place?..." http://ashleynolan.co.uk/blog/are-we-getting-too-sassy +03: DRUPAL. Drupal Self-Help Guide By University of Minnesota. "Discover resources of interest to you, including: courses, books, websites, video & audio, and pdfs..." http://it.umn.edu/services/all/training-usability/self-help/self-help-guides/drupal.html Exposing Tables to Views in Drupal 7 By Daniel Sipos. "In this article you are going to learn how to expose the table created by your Drupal module to Views. Why would you like to do this? Views is a powerful module for querying and displaying information and can save you a lot of hassle when dealing with the custom data your module produces..." http://www.sitepoint.com/exposing-tables-views-drupal-7/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Accessibility Consulting is Broken By Karl Groves. "... days of the monolithic accessibility audit report are numbered, as it is an outdated medium that fails to directly address the actual problems faced by the consultant's clients. Clients, often driven by pain based in ignorance, want and deserve a more direct and proactive approach to solving the root causes of their pain. The proscriptive nature of an audit report should give way to the close involvement and leadership of a skilled consultant." http://www.karlgroves.com/2014/06/09/accessibility-consulting-is-broken/ +05: EVENTS. Madison+UX July 10-12, 2014. Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A. http://madisonpl.us/ux/ Open Web Camp July 12, 2014. San Jose, California, U.S.A. http://openwebcamp.com/ Mobile Web+DevCon: Chicago 2014 July 15-17, 2014. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://mobilewebdevconference.com/ Twin Cities Drupal Camp August 7-10, 2014. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. http://2014.tcdrupal.org/ Big Design Conference September 4-6, 2014. Addison, Texas, U.S.A. http://bigdesignevents.com/conference/ +06: FLASH. Hack the Web - No Flash By Hubert Figuiere. "I am a hipster Flash hater. I hated Flash before Steve Jobs told it was bad. I hate Flash before Adobe said there would be no Flash 7 for Linux. I don't have Flash on my machine..." http://www.figuiere.net/hub/blog/?2014/06/04/849-hack-the-web-no-flash +07: JAVASCRIPT. How Not To Misuse ARIA States, Properties and Roles By Jonathan (Jon) Avila. "...Authors must use appropriate ARIA roles, states, and properties or unpredictable issues may occur. It is not recommended to use incorrect properties to simply achieve support with a screen reader. Similarly, authors should not override strong native semantics for elements and should be very cautious about adding implied ARIA properties to semantically equivalent HTML elements. The ARIA specification will likely be updated and further implementation guidance provided in the future so please share your comments and recommendations to improve ARIA." https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2014/06/05/how-not-to-misuse-aria-states-properties-and-roles/ Aria-labelledby and Aria-describedby Support in Popular Windows Browsers By Steve Faulkner. "...Firefox 29 supports aria-labelledby and aria-describedby with single or multiple id references. Chrome 35 supports aria-labelledby and aria-describedby with single or multiple id references. IE 11 does not support aria-labelledby or aria-describedby with single or multiple id references unless the referenced element is what Microsft classes as an accessible element. IE non accessible elements can be made into accessible elements by the addition of tabindex="-1" as documented or via the addition of an ARIA role (when appropriate)." http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/06/aria-labelledby-aria-describedby-support-popular-windows-browsers/ Using ARIA 1.0 and the WebKit Accessibility Node Inspector By James Craig. "On the heels of the 25th birthday of the Web, WAI-ARIA 1.0Ñthe specification for Accessible Rich Internet ApplicationsÑis a W3C Recommendation, thanks in part to WebKitÕs implementation. Most major web applications use ARIA and related techniques to improve accessibility and general usability..." https://www.webkit.org/blog/3302/aria_and_accessibility_inspector/ 7 Steps to Better JavaScript By Den Odell. "Den Odell presents his seven-step plan for writing flawless code, and rounds up the most useful tools for streamlining the process." http://www.creativebloq.com/netmag/7-steps-better-javascript-51411781 Accessible Bootstrap Frameworks By Adrian Roselli. "If you work much with accessibility, then you might consider the title of this post to be an oxymoron, a self-contradicting mess. Frankly, I tend to agree. Barring a compelling use case, I never start a project with Bootstrap and I resist including it when explicitly requested (so far successfully in nearly every case). Of a few reasons, accessibility is the biggest issue I have with it..." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/06/accessible-bootstrap-frameworks.html +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Responsive Images By Derek Johnson. "The tag all started with this message and has been with us since HTML 2.0. In that time it hasn't changed much at all, just put a path to an image in the src attribute and you have an image on the screen..." http://nostrongbeliefs.com/responsive-images/ +09: NAVIGATION. Avoid Format-Based Primary Navigation By Aurora Bedford. "Format-based navigation, such as links to Videos, at the top levels of a website's information architecture lacks sufficient context and information scent for topic-focused users." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/format-based-navigation/ +10: USABILITY. The Most Fundamental Concept in Usability By Jeff Sauro. "There are a number of methods to improve the usability of an interface. While it's hard to identify one overarching concept that's fundamental to the whole idea of usability, I think there's one that underlies most methods and desirable outcomes. That concept is that the developer is not the user." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/fundamental-usability.php [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: 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.]