+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 15, Issue 23, December 1, 2016. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 23 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: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 09: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Something to Say About Accessibility Standards? By Jeanne Spellman. "Call for Stakeholders for a major update of WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines): The W3C WCAG Working Group's Silver Task Force invites submissions of names of people, groups, or organizations (including yourself) for consideration as stakeholders for a future guidelines version. You can submit as many names as you want. Please use the following form to submit names before 9 December 2016..." https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2016OctDec/0135.html Assistive Technology Industry Must Address Challenges, Warns Expert By Tristan Parker. "...Website accessibility remains a significant problem for the AT sector..." http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=1261 Accessibility Survey Reveals PDF Problems, Technology Types and Satisfied Users By Tristan Parker. "The UK Government online services portal, GOV.UK, is aiming to cut down on PDFs after an accessibility survey revealed that many users encounter problems with them..." http://www.headstar.com/eablive/?p=1258 The Experts have Spoken! Our Favorite Accessibility Tools By Deque Systems. "...This week, we spoke with our accessibility experts to find out their favorite current accessibility tools. These are the accessibility checkers and tools that our experts use in their daily work; the tools that make web accessibility possible..." http://www.deque.com/blog/experts-spoken-favorite-accessibility-tools/ Department of Justice Employment and Employment-related Americans with Disabilities Act Settlement Agreements (Hat tip to Jennifer Sutton) By Partnership on Employment & Accessible Technology (PEAT). List of employment related agreements http://www.peatworks.org/resources/policy/DOJSettlements/List +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Should I Try to Use the IE Implementation of CSS Grid Layout? By Rachel Andrew. "This blog post started life as an answer to a question posted over at my CSS Grid AMA..." https://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/11/26/should-i-try-to-use-the-ie-implementation-of-css-grid-layout/ Between the Braces By Jeremey Keith. "...I find it fascinating that most of the innovation in CSS from the browser makers and standards bodies arrives in the form of new properties and values-flexbox, grid, shapes, viewport units, and so on. Meanwhile there's a whole other world of problems to be solved outside the curly braces..." https://adactio.com/journal/11541 When to Use Which CSS Methodology By Simon Simurai. "Over the years more and more CSS methodologies started to appear. In this post we try to find the right CSS methodology for a certain situation, because there just isn't the perfect one for every situation, unfortunately..." http://simurai.com/blog/2016/11/27/css-methodologies +03: COLOR. High Contrast, A PostCSS Plugin Story By Eduard Pochtar. "The following is a guest post by Eduard Pochtar from ShiwaForce. Eduard is going to walk us through they why and how of a plugin he and his team built to process existing CSS to make a high contrast version of a web site. It involved a little thinking and a little strong arming to make it happen." https://css-tricks.com/high-contrast-postcss-plugin-story/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Challenges and Opportunities of Measuring the User Experience By Jeff Sauro. "Not too long ago it seemed the biggest challenge facing companies was justifying any investment in usability and the user experience..." http://uxpajournal.org/challenges-opportunities-measuring-user-experience/ What Are Personas and Why Should I Care? (Video) By Kim Flaherty. "Kim Flaherty, UX Specialist at Nielsen Norman Group, explains user personas and why you should care." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khLWLtxmMGM Reflecting on the One-Way Mirror By Jeff Sauro. "...Researchers once considered it essential, but in the last few years I've seen companies moving away from the mirror. Here are some advantages and disadvantages of the one-way mirror..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/one-way-mirror.php The Beginner's guide to Usability Testing By Cindy McCracken. "You are not your users. But if you can find your users and learn from them as you design, you'll be able to create a better product..." http://uxmastery.com/beginners-guide-to-usability-testing/ +05: EVENTS. An Event Apart Boston May 15-17, 2017. Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. https://aneventapart.com/event/boston-2017 John Slatin AccessU May 17-19, 2017. Austin, Texas, U.S.A. http://www.knowbility.org/v/john-slatin-accessu/ Accessibility Conference May 30-31, 2017. Guelph, Ontario, Canada http://accessconf.ca/ +06: HTML5. What's New in HTML 5.1 By Pavels Jelisejevs. "...here's an overview of some of the interesting new features and improvements introduced in 5.1. Browser support is still lacking for these features but we'll refer you to at least some browsers which can be used to test each example..." https://www.sitepoint.com/whats-new-in-html-5-1/ Random Interesting Facts on HTML/SVG Usage By Catalin Rosu. "...We're back again this time to showcase some random and hopefully interesting facts on markup usage..." https://css-tricks.com/random-interesting-facts-htmlsvg-usage/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. WAI-ARIA Basics By Chris David Mills. "Following on from the previous article, sometimes making complex UI controls that involve unsemantic HTML and dynamic JavaScript-updated content can be difficult. WAI-ARIA is a technology that can help with such problems by adding in further semantics that browsers and assistive technologies can recognize and use to let users know what is going on. Here we'll show how to use it at a basic level to improve accessiblity." https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/Accessibility/WAI-ARIA_basics +08: USABILITY. Alternatives to Placeholder Text By Andrew Coyle. "Improve form usability by addressing the perils of placeholders..." https://uxdesign.cc/alternatives-to-placeholder-text-13f430abc56f 5 Ways Whitespace Can Impact Your UX By Robyn Collinge. "...Instead of seeing whitespace as the leftovers of your design or web page, you should see it as an autonomous design element..." http://blog.usabilla.com/5-ways-whitespace-can-impact-ux/ Measuring the First Impression: Testing the Validity of the 5 Second Test By Guillaume Gronier. "This study aims at measuring the scientific validity of a method often used, but little formalized, to evaluate user experience: the 5 Second Test..." http://uxpajournal.org/measuring-testing-validity-5-second-test/ Cross-National Usability Study of a Housing Accessibility App: Findings From the European InnovAge Project By Oskar Jonsson, Maria Haak, Signe Tomsone, Susanne Iwarsson, Steven M. Schmidt, Knut Mårtensson, Torbjörn Svensson, Björn Slaug. "The present usability study concerns an evaluation of an Android based mobile application (app) targeting housing accessibility issues, in a prototype stage for a touch tablet..." http://www.uxpajournal.org/usability-housing-accessibility-european-innovage-project/ Usability Testing Accordion-Style Checkouts: 2 UX Pitfalls that 75% of Sites Neglect By Christian Holst. "When benchmarking checkout flows for the first time back in 2012, we found that 14% of the top 100 US e-commerce sites used an accordion-style checkout. Accordion-style checkouts have been an ever increasing trend since then, and in 2016 we've found that 32% of checkout flows are accordion-style..." http://baymard.com/blog/accordion-checkout-usability The Top Enduring Intranet-Design Mistakes: 7 Deadly Sins By Kara Pernice. "Intranet tools and programs come and go, but bad UIs linger for years, impact employee productivity and morale, and ultimately increase organizational costs." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-intranet-design-mistakes/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +09: 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.]