+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 14, Issue 43, April 21, 2016.

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: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
03: COLOR.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: HTML5.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: SITES AND BLOGS.
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.

Making News Websites Accessible to All
By Michael Fitzgerald.
"For journalists who want to represent readers' interests, ensuring equal access to online content is essential..."
http://niemanreports.org/articles/making-news-websites-accessible-to-all/

Masterplanning the Digital Campus to Support Learners with Disabilities
By Sarah Horton.
"Ensuring the accessibility to students with disabilities of online learning experiences is widely recognised as a socially and legally significant objective..."
https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2016/04/masterplanning/

Facebook's First Blind Engineer is Revolutionizing Social Media as We Know It
By Seth Fiegerman.
"Halfway through Matt King's presentation, the screen goes dark..."
http://mashable.com/2016/04/05/matt-king-facebook/

Accessibility Basics Series Q&A - Non-text Elements
By Kim Phillips.
"Last week's presentation in our Accessibility Basics Webinar Series covered best practices for non-text elements. Training Specialist Erica Zelmanowicz presented the webinar and has provided answers to the questions that came in during Q&A - including those we weren't able to get to during the allotted time..."
http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/accessibility-basics-series-qa-non-text-elements/

Accessibility Testing with the NVDA Screenreader
By Matt Isner.
"This is the first post in a two-part series on Accessibility Testing for Developers by Matt Isner, a developer here at Deque Systems. For today's post, Matt has created a video demonstration for sighted developers on how to install and configure the NVDA screen reader for accessibility testing..."
http://www.deque.com/blog/accessibility-testing-nvda-screenreader/

New York City Enacts Accessibility Standards for Government Websites
By John W. Egan.
"NYC recently passed a law requiring that its government agency websites meet accessibility standards.  Other state and local governments may follow NYC's lead and enact accessibility standards for government agencies, contractors and even public accommodations in the absence of regulations from DOJ."
http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=dd010164-cb54-4e0a-b4c9-1278b28cc7e4


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

The Experimental Layout Lab of Jen Simmons
By Jen Simmons.
"Check back often. This will keep changing."
http://labs.jensimmons.com/

A Complete Guide to CSS Grid Layout
By Chris House.
"SS Grid Layout (aka "Grid"), is a two-dimensional grid-based layout system that aims to do nothing less than completely change the way we design grid-based user interfaces..."
http://chris.house/blog/a-complete-guide-css-grid-layout/


+03: COLOR.

Color in Design Systems
By Nathan Curtis.
"16 tips for setting up a system that endures..."
https://medium.com/eightshapes-llc/color-in-design-systems-a1c80f65fa3


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Checklist for Planning Usability Studies
By Hoa Loranger.
"Planning a user test? Follow these 9 steps to make sure you are prepared."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-test-checklist/

How to Integrate Continuous User Testing Into Your Product Development Workflow
By Edmond Lau.
"The earlier we can make course corrections, the less effort we'll waste and the bigger the impact we'll create...."
https://www.usertesting.com/blog/2016/04/19/continuous-user-testing/


+05: EVENTS.

Universal Design 2016
August 21–24, 2016. 
York, England, United Kingdom
http://ud2016.uk/


+06: HTML5.

Accessible Date Pickers
By Dennis Lembree.
"Unfortunately, several shiny HTML5 features (such as the video element), ended up implemented to different levels by browsers, without good accessibility, and without an interface that satisfied designers (a nearly impossible task). This includes the date input..."
http://www.webaxe.org/accessible-date-pickers/

Looking at Summary Details in HTML5
By Karl Dubost.
"On the dev-platform mailing-list, Ting-Yu Lin has sent an Intent to Ship: HTML5 <details> and <summary> tags. So what about it?..."
http://www.otsukare.info/2016/04/19/summary-details


+07: JAVASCRIPT.

Danger! ARIA Tabs
By Jeff Smith.
"ARIA is a great way to make things technically accessible, sometimes without requiring markup changes. But it can be tricky, even if you're using it in a technically correct way. In this post, Jeff breaks down an ARIA tabs interaction to see how ARIA can impact users with disabilities-and how to make tabs truly accessible."
http://simplyaccessible.com/article/danger-aria-tabs/

aria-setsize (property)
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"aria-setsize property defines total number of items in a list or a treeview. Defining aria-setsize is not required if all elements in the set are present in the DOM."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2016/04/aria-setsize-property/ 

A Guide to Proper Error Handling in JavaScript
By Camilo Reyes.
"A look at approaches and best practices to error handling in JavaScript, including how to deal with errors thrown by asynchronous code."
http://www.sitepoint.com/proper-error-handling-javascript/

Why Javascript Development is Crazy
By Sean Fioritto.
"Grunt/Gulp npm, require.js, browserify, es6, compilers, transpilers, jasmine mocha chai, react/angular/ember, closures, prototypes. *head explodes*"
http://www.planningforaliens.com/blog/2016/04/11/why-js-development-is-crazy/

Quick Tip: Function Expressions vs Function Declarations
By Paul Wilkins.
"JavaScript has two different ways of creating functions..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/function-expressions-vs-declarations/


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Accessibility and Web Optimization (Video)
By Chris Heilmann.
"Chris Heilmann, Developer Evangelist at Microsoft gave a no-frills talk on the issues we need to tackle to keep the web from becoming the slow lane of information transport. He shares his developer's checklist for 2016, talks about using service workers, optimising images, Open API Project Oxford's emotion recognition, the importance of accessibility for all end users and basically reminds us of all the terrible things that we're doing and not changing..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KH7YG_DKFmM

Interview with Hakon Wium Lie
By Oliver Lindberg.
"The inventor of CSS explains how it saved the web - but warns that the battle is not over yet..."
https://medium.com/net-magazine/interview-with-håkon-wium-lie-f3328aeca8ed#.zbl0xdpqw


+09: SITES AND BLOGS.

Accessible Techcomm
By Cynthia A Lockley.
"This is a breakout site from the Society for Technical Communication's (STC) Accessibility SIG, which pruned all this information out of their site..."
http://accessible-techcomm.org/


+10: TOOLS.

The Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool
By Jacob Bates.
"The Universal Design Online content Inspection Tool, or UDOIT (pronounced, 'You Do It') enables faculty to identify accessibility issues in Canvas by Instructure. It will scan a course, generate a report, and provide resources on how to address common accessibility issues."
https://github.com/ucfcdl/UDOIT


+11: TYPOGRAPHY.

How Letterspacing Can Make All Caps Easier to Read
By UX Movement.
"All caps text is like a spice, you don't want to overuse it. A little can go a long way when you use it on content and menu headings to show contrast from regular body text. But when your headings contain more than a few words, users need to make an effort to read them..."
http://uxmovement.com/content/how-letterspacing-can-make-all-caps-easier-to-read/


+12: USABILITY.

Myth #34: Simple = Minimal
By Zoltan Gocza.
"Simplicity is key to great and innovative product design. But simplicity is way often confused with minimalist style. In fact, simple looking, minimal product UIs often carry hidden complexity..."
http://uxmyths.com/post/115783813605/myth-34-simple-minimal

Perceived Value in User Interfaces
By Aurora Bedford.
"The perceived value of a site represents the benefit that users expect to derive from using it. High expectations make users more likely to engage with the site."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/perceived-value/

The Future is Purposeful Work
By Gerry McGovern.
"...The Web is a bridge between producer and consumer. In many areas the lines will blur. The consumer will become a co-creator or co-producer. But whatever happens, success is founded in the intense and constant feedback between the act and the reaction, between what is produced and how it is consumed."
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/future-purposeful-work

Compassionate UX
By Sara Wachter-Boettcher and Eric A. Meyer.
"Google's long been known for its April Fool's hoaxes-from Google Paper, which purported to send you a printed archive of all your email, to Google Gulp, a fake beverage. They're usually good for a laugh or two..."
http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/compassionate-ux/

[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

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.]