+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 17, October 24, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 17 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: COLOR. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: HTML5. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. HTML5: Techniques for Providing Useful Text Alternatives W3C Working Draft 23 October 2014 By Steve Faulkner, editor. "This document contains best practice guidance for authors of HTML [HTML5] documents on providing text alternatives for images..." http://www.w3.org/TR/2014/WD-html-alt-techniques-20141023/ Developing an Accessible Star Ratings Widget By Thierry Koblentz. "Many ecommerce sites, social networking services, and online communities include rating or assessment features. Soliciting people's opinion has even become a business model; there are now sites dedicated to rating products, services, businesses, and more. The most common interface used to display votes is the 'star rating system' in which a particular number of points (often expressed as stars) is assigned to an item by each reviewer. We find this model on many sites, from Amazon to Yelp." http://www.cssmojo.com/developing-an-accessible-star-ratings-widget/ Higher Ed Raises Concerns, Works with Proponents of the TEACH Act By Jarret Cummings. "In September, EDUCAUSE and a number of other higher education associations released an analysis of the Technology, Equality, and Accessibility in College and Higher Education (TEACH) Act. The proposed legislation, not to be confused with the already established TEACH Act on copyright issues (see the 2009 ECAR Research Bulletin on the topic for more information), is intended to improve the accessibility of 'electronic instructional materials and related technologies' for persons with disabilities. The bill attempts to do this by tasking the U.S. Access Board with developing accessibility guidelines for such materials and technologies..." http://www.educause.edu/blogs/jcummings/higher-ed-raises-concerns-works-proponents-teach-act Accessibility Claims Expected Over Websites By Angus Loten. "...The Justice Department, which enforces the disability-rights act, isn't expected to post official compliance standards for websites and mobile apps until next year. But lawyers say the H&R Block case offers a clear road map for disability-access claims, and is likely to spark a surge of lawsuits with violations that pertain to websites. The agreement included the use of captions, text alternatives and audio descriptions, among other tools set out in website accessibility guidelines published by the World Wide Web Consortium, a nonprofit group based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..." http://online.wsj.com/articles/accessibility-claims-expected-over-websites-1413411990 ADA Claims Coming for Retailers This Holiday Season for Inaccessible Websites By Selena J. Linde and Kimberly Reindl. "The Department of Justice takes the position that websites are covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). More claims are being filed by plaintiffs targeting retailers whose websites are inaccessible to consumers who are blind or have low vision. With more than $72 billion to be spent online this holiday season, retailers that do not address accessibility issues may be on the receiving end of claims-and may look more like the Grinch than Santa Claus." http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/ada-claims-coming-for-retailers-this-hol-68829/ Designing for Dyslexia (Part 1) By Andrew Zusman. "As designers, we think daily about the challenges our users may face, and choose the right best practices and patterns to help them. This week, UX designer Andrew Zusman introduces us to a unique challenge faced by dyslexics around the world: the challenge of not recognizing the patterns that seem so obvious to many of us..." http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/designing-for-dyslexia-part-1/ CDC Ebola Response on Twitter Excludes Blind By Adrian Roselli. "...Even if you're not the CDC, I think there is still a lesson to be learned here - putting all your tweet content into embedded images is a great way to exclude users. Thankfully the CDC can choose from one of three (four?) easy fixes..." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/10/cdc-ebola-response-on-twitter-excludes.html Of Disabilities and Bad Attitudes By Nicolas Steenhout. "Suggesting that a bad attitude causes disability is both untrue and damaging to people with disabilities..." http://incl.ca/of-disabilities-and-bad-attitudes/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Axiomatic CSS and Lobotomized Owls By Heydon Pickering. "Managing flow content can get unwieldy-too many class selectors can become a specificity headache, nested styling can get redundant, and content editors don't always understand the presentational markup. Heydon Pickering offers an unexpected option for handling cascading styles more efficiently: a variation on the universal selector." http://alistapart.com/article/axiomatic-css-and-lobotomized-owls CSS {all: initial} to Prevent Widgets Inheriting CSS From a Host Page By Bruce Lawson. "Imagine you have some sort of widget - an ad box, a sign-up form, some execrable collection of social buttons, whetevs - that you're injecting into arbitrary pages using JavaScript. You don't want your widget to get weirdly styled by the host page's CSS. This is when you want to undo the CSS..." http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2014/css-all-initial-to-prevent-widgets-inheriting-css-from-a-host-page/ The Secret of Grid Layouts, and the Mistake You're probably Making By Speider Schneider. "...The grid layout is not some obsolete design principle and whether it's for print or the web, it is a design strength that broke ground decades ago but still rings true with basics of great design. It is the foundation on which all design is built..." http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2014/10/the-secret-of-grid-layouts-and-the-mistake-youre-probably-making/ +03: COLOR. Design Accessibly, See Differently - Color Contrast Tips And Tools By Cathy O' Connor. "...In this article, I'll share one aspect of design accessibility: making sure that the look and feel (the visual design of the content) are sufficiently inclusive of differently sighted users..." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/10/22/color-contrast-tips-and-tools-for-accessibility/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. How to Conduct a Usability Heuristic Evaluation By Armen Ghazarian. "User experience works best when it's incorporated into every stage of product development, starting from idea to development and testing..." http://designmodo.com/usability-heuristic-evaluation/ +05: EVENTS. Accessibility Summit April 17-18, 2015. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. http://accessibilitysummit.org/ IA Summit April 22-26, 2015. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. http://2015.iasummit.org/ University of Illinois Web Conference April 29-30, 2015. Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A. http://webcon.illinois.edu/ John Slatin AccessU May 11-13, 2015. Austin, Texas, U.S.A. http://www.knowbility.org/v/john-slatin-accessu/ 24th International World Wide Web Conference May 18-22, 2015. Florence, Italy http://www.www2015.it/ Web Conference at Penn State June 22-23, 2015. Penn State, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. http://webconference.psu.edu/ +06: HTML5. Footnotes and Endnotes in HTML.next By David MacDonald. I've taken an action item with John Foliot to propose a new element in HTML5 for footnotes. The and related elements would provide an easy way for authors to create functioning footnotes, such as those in MS Word. Here's a Q&A to start the discussion. http://davidmacd.com/blog/html51-footnotes.html How to Make Sites More Accessible With Web Components By Marcy Sutton. "Interactive web developer Marcy Sutton discusses the potential of Web Components to extend the accessible browsing experience. " http://www.creativebloq.com/netmag/how-make-sites-more-accessible-web-components-101413200 HTML5 Video Captioning By 3PlayMedia. "HTML is the markup language used to render almost every page on the web. HTML5 is the latest version, and it's replete with incredibly useful features, including a universal video standard that lets developers add video to a web page without using any third party plugins, like Flash. The new standard also makes it much easier to publish accessible video through closed captioning..." http://www.3playmedia.com/how-it-works/how-to-guides/html5-video-captioning/ +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Improving Your Information Architecture With Card Sorting: A Beginner's Guide By Pierre Croft. "In this article, we'll discuss card sorting, a tried and true technique for doing just that. We'll go through some practical tips for running a card-sorting session, and also cover some examples..." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/10/20/improving-information-architecture-card-sorting-beginners-guide/ +08: JAVASCRIPT. JavaScript Beyond the Web in 2014 By Patrick Catanzariti. "JavaScript has evolved far beyond its role in the DHTML websites of the 90s. It is fast becoming the leading contender for a common language for the Internet of Things (IoT). While it's far too early to say if JavaScript will truly take that crown, I believe JavaScript does have a role to play in this ever expanding IoT space..." http://www.sitepoint.com/javascript-beyond-web-2014/ +09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10 Things to Consider When Building a Responsive Site By Paul Boag. "This week on the Boagworld show we take a close look at responsive design, and identify ten things you should consider when going responsive..." http://boagworld.com/season/10/episode/1014/ NAGW Slides - Responsive Web Design Primer By Adrian Roselli. "I just finished a webinar for the National Association of Government Web Professionals where I provided an overview of responsive design. I always struggle when I cannot see the audience, but as always my ego carries me through to the end. The slides are embedded here for any and all to see..." http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/10/nagw-slides-responsive-web-design-primer.html +10: NAVIGATION. Improve Accessibility with Smarter Flagging By Heydon Pickering. "The convention for flagging up current pages is far from accessible. Heydon Pickering discusses his search for a suitable alternative. " http://www.creativebloq.com/web-design/improve-accessibility-smarter-flagging-101413228 Hyperlinks and Accessibility By Rakesh Paladugula. "...Keep the following points in mind to have an accessible hyperlink. Proper link description...Proper link description...Keyboard focus visibility...Identifying links from surrounding content..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/10/hyperlinks-accessibility/ Writing Appropriate Link Text By Rakesh Paladugula. "...WCAG 2.0 SC 2.4.4 link purpose (in context) and SC 2.4.9 Link purpose (only) (future link) mandates that an appropriate link description should be provided for each link to understand the target, purpose or the action associated with them..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/10/writing-appropriate-link-text/ 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In context) By Rakesh Paladugula. "...The purpose of each link should be provided by the link text or its programmatically surrounded content. If the link text does not provide the target or purpose of the link the surrounding content should be able to do so..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/10/2-4-4-link-purpose-context/ Apple on Hamburger Menus By Manbolo Team Blog. "...Apple could not be clearer: don't use hamburgers menus on iOS." http://blog.manbolo.com/2014/06/30/apple-on-hamburger-menus +11: USABILITY. Busy People Need Help, Not Interruptions By Gerry McGovern. "..The future is about being useful. People know what they want when they come to the Web. Don't disrupt, interrupt, distract or annoy them. Help them succeed at completing the task they came to do." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/busy-people-need-help-not-interruptions Form Usability - The Pitfalls of Inline Accordion and Tab Designs By Jamie Appleseed. "...In this article we'll dive into the observations from our test sessions, highlight the issues and design affordances that both inline accordion forms and tabbed form layouts produce, and touch upon some design alternatives..." http://baymard.com/blog/accordion-and-tab-design How Bad UX Killed Jenny By Jonathan Shariat. "...When most of us design a User Interface, and fail at basic usability, the worst that happens is that our product fails. Yet, when the designers of this system, or even an airplane's cockpit, fail at their design, there are real physical harms. With so much on the line, you would think these industries would have hired the best designers in the world to carefully craft the User Experience. But they don't..." https://medium.com/@designuxui/how-bad-ux-killed-jenny-ef915419879e [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +12: 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.]