+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 06, August 6, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 06 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: HTML5. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. An Alphabet of Accessibility Issues By Anne Gibson. "...This alphabet soup of accessibility is not a collection of personas. These are friends and family I love. Sometimes I'm describing a group. (One can only describe chemo brain so many times.) Some people are more than one letter. (Yay genetic lottery.) Some represent stages people were in 10 years ago and some stages we know they will hit - we just don't know when..." http://the-pastry-box-project.net/anne-gibson/2014-July-31 How to Be a Keyboard Accessibility Super Hero By Derek Featherstone. "You too can be a keyboard accessibility super hero if you do these three simple things really well. The best part is, you don't even have to work that hard to do them and they make you look brilliant!" http://simplyaccessible.com/article/keyboard-superhero/ Two Important Tests for Website Accessibility By Kyle Hebert. "Once you've decided to improve accessibility, the first thing to do is to work out where you are accessibility-wise and where you need to go. This will differ based on your target audience, but Joe and Crystal offered some basic tests that are good starting points..." http://maptechworks.org/two-important-tests-for-website-accessibility/ Define Abbreviations or Acronyms on their First Occurrence in Content By Denis Boudreau. "Make sure abbreviations and acronyms are explained on their first occurrence in content..." http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/93590502707/define-abbreviations-or-acronyms-on-their-first Programmatically Associate Abbreviations with Their Definitions By Denis Boudreau. "Make sure the meaning of abbreviations and acronyms is conveyed to assistive technologies..." http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/93678107207/programmatically-associate-abbreviations-with-their PDF Accessibility - Accessible Forms in Acrobat XI By WebAIM. "Compared to HTML, PDF forms have some inherent accessibility limitations. There is no real way to associate the visible text label with the form field, but there is a way to provide a text description that will be read to a screen reader while navigating through the PDF. In addition to the accessibility principles outlined in the previous page of this article, the following four steps are required to ensure the accessibility of a PDF form..." http://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/forms +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. On Internet Explorer Supporting webkit Vendor Prefixes By Bruce Lawson. News is just in from Microsoft that Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 8.1 Update will support legacy webkit-prefixed features..." http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2014/on-internet-explorer-supporting-webkit-vendor-prefixes/ Remove Unused CSS to Reduce the Size of your Stylesheets By Amit Agarwal. "he CSS files of your website may have several redundant rules that are no longer used by any element on the web pages. For instance, you may have added a site search box on your website and associated styles went into the stylesheet. Later, if you decide to remove that search box, the styles may continue to exist in your CSS though they aren't being used anywhere..." http://www.labnol.org/internet/remove-unused-css/28635/ Adding a Sticky Footer with Flexbox By Marc Drummond. "If you work on almost any site design, you'll run into a fun little problem: short pages, and the footers that hate them..." http://marcdrummond.com/posts/2014/08/04/adding-sticky-footer-flexbox Keep Sass Simple By Hugo Giraudel. "...at some point every single person using Sass (or any other preprocessor for that matter) has been tempted to over-engineer something to make things simple... be careful with what you're doing in real projects. Above all, keep things simple. Less is more." http://www.sitepoint.com/keep-sass-simple/ +03: DRUPAL. math captcha (Drupal module) WebAIM Thread. "I'm evaluating a website for accessibility. This site has a math captcha in which the math question is not read while in forms mode by JAWS or NVDA. The user can use the up arrow key to hear the question, but it is not read when tabbing into the form field..." http://webaim.org/discussion/mail_thread?thread=6532 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Observing Usability Studies: A Guide for Stakeholders By Cory Lebson. "I love knowing that one or more stakeholders are going to observe a study live. By doing so, they will gain a better understanding of the issues and will more fully understand the associated recommendations. Live in-person observation not only gives observers the opportunity to pick up on visual cues and nuances during the study, but also lets them easily ask questions or discuss their observations between the sessions..." https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140710141212-46886-observing-usability-studies-a-guide-for-stakeholders 5 Provocative Views on Usability Testing By David Travis. "In July, I had the pleasure of being on a panel on usability testing at the UXPA with Rolf Mohlich, Steve Krug, and Jakob Biesterfeldt. I was asked to take a deliberately provocative view on 5 issues in usability testing. In this article, I'll argue that these 5 common beliefs about usability testing are false." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/5-provocative-views.html +05: EVENTS. dConstruct 2014 September 5, 2014. Brighton, England, United Kingdom http://2014.dconstruct.org/ Web Accessibility Training October 7-8, 2014. Logan, Utah, U.S.A. http://webaim.org/training/ +06: HTML5. The HTML5 longdesc Attribute is Finally Home Again By Shelley Powers. "...The transition of @longdesc to CR status demonstrates that the HTML5 working process has, indeed, grown up." http://burningbird.net/html5-longdesc-attribute-finally-home-again Using the tabindex Attribute By Leonie Watson. "The HTML tabindex attribute is used to manage keyboard focus. Used wisely, it can effectively handle focus within web widgets. Used unwisely however, the tabindex attribute can destroy the usability of web content for keyboard users..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2014/08/using-the-tabindex-attribute/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. How to Provide Accessible Error Identification By Jonathan Avila. "This post covers the basics of providing accessible form error identification to users with disabilities. Accessible error identification in particular benefits users who are blind or visually impaired and users with cognitive impairments. Good error identification has benefits to all users. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level A and AA provide three main success criteria (SC) for accessible error identification..." https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2014/08/04/how-to-provide-accessible-error-identification/ ARIA Cheat Sheet By Karl Groves. Includes Landmark Roles, Widget Roles and States & Properties http://www.karlgroves-sandbox.com/ariacheatsheet.php +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Open Web Camp VI Videos By Evan Davis. "On July 12, 2014 the sixth annual Open Web Camp went down in San Jose. The NewCircle crew was lucky enough to attend, and we brought some cameras too. Please enjoy these sessions from a select group of speakers dedicated to making the web an open and accessible place for everyone!" https://thenewcircle.com/s/post/1621/open_web_camp_vi_videos +09: NAVIGATION. 2.4.5 Multiple Ways By Rakesh Paladugula. "More than one way is available to locate a Web page within a set of Web pages except where the Web Page is the result of, or a step in, a process. (Level AA). Description A website may differ ranging a simple website of 4-5 pages to thousands of web pages. Searching for information on..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/07/2-4-5-multiple-ways/ +10: USABILITY. Print is View, Web is Do By Gerry McGovern. "How much of your organization's online world is made up of dead zones and how much is do zones? A dead zone is any space where there's nothing to do. It's a big pretty picture, or a huge graphic-heavy masthead, or a long-winded explanation of what you do or what the customer can do. The customer doesn't want an explanation of what they can do. They just want to do." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/print-view-web-do 3 Questions With Usability Expert Dr. Jakob Nielsen By Paul Brooks. "What's the biggest usability mistake you see in corporate web design? Not getting to the point. Beating around the bush. Corporate websites have big pictures of things that people don't care about that delay them in finding the answers to their questions. Or the websites don't even answer their questions. The one thing users ask the most is, 'What's the price?' and it's amazing how often you can't see the price'..." http://simplicity.laserfiche.com/content/3-questions-usability-expert-dr-jakob-nielsen How We Read By Jason Stanta Maria. "We're pleased to share an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Jason Santa Maria's new book, On Web Typography, available now from A Book Apart." http://alistapart.com/article/how-we-read Maximize the Content-to-Chrome Ratio, Not the Amount of Content on Screen By Raluca Budiu. "On a large screen, hiding the chrome significantly affects discoverability and interaction cost, with virtually no improvement to the content-to-chrome ratio." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/content-chrome-ratio/ [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 Drupal Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.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 HTML Information. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html.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.]