+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 16, Issue 15, October 7, 2017. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 15 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: HTML. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: NAVIGATION. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. A Smartphone Accessibility Primer; or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Master Mobile Accessibility By Kara Van Roekel. "This is part one of a series of articles that will take you through the basics of mobile accessibility for Android and iPhone, and help you conduct an accessibility assessment on the mobile device of your choice…" http://simplyaccessible.com/article/smartphone-a11y-primer-1/ Five Ways to Make Usable Websites for People with Dyslexia By Paul Crichton. "we've put together a list of actions that we can all take to make our digital content easier to use and understand for people with dyslexia…" http://whatusersdo.com/blog/five-ways-make-usable-websites-people-dyslexia/ Good Design Was Always Accessible (Video) By Sharlene King. "For many designers, accessibility features are a checklist after the first ideas, but the past reveals how design with the longest last impact is often the most accessible. What can we glean from the most iconic designs? How can our own work use access as a best practice instead of a burden?…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjvz2iWRnD4 Planning & Producing Accessible Videos for Web, Social Media & eLearning By Jennie Delisi and Jay Wyant. Video and slides have are online from this July 20, 2017 webinar. https://www.accessibilityonline.org/ada-tech/archives/110604 WebAIM Screen Reader User Survey 7 By Rakesh Paladugula. "WebAIM screen reader user survey 7 is a study conducted by WebAIM to understand the preferences of screen reader users…" http://www.maxability.co.in/2017/10/webaim-screen-reader-user-survey-7/ JAWS Wide Open By Steve Faulkner. "…Recently we have been working with our colleagues at Freedom Scientific to bring the same sense of open dialogue we enjoy with other web software implementers to JAWS. This has taken the form of an open issue tracker for the JAWS screen reader.…" https://developer.paciellogroup.com/blog/2017/10/jaws-wide-open/ Accessibility Toronto Conference a Big Success! By Dennis Lembree. "The inaugural Accessibility Toronto Conference was a big success! The event was held September 28-29, 2017 in the TELUS building in downtown Toronto…" http://www.webaxe.org/accessibility-toronto-conference-a-big-success/ Slides From A11yTOConf By Adrian Roselli. Adrian's "Everything I Know about Accessibilty I learned form Stack Overflow" slides. http://adrianroselli.com/2017/09/slides-from-a11ytoconf.html How to Create an Accessible PDF By Patrick Loftus. "There are countless programs that enable you to save a document as a PDF. Not all of those programs, however, will produce tagged PDF files. There is also more to making an PDF accessible than simply adding tags…" http://www.3playmedia.com/2017/09/27/create-accessible-pdf/ Rethinking Web Accessibility On Windows By Marco Zehe. "For the past 18 years, screen readers on Windows have had a particular way of presenting web content to their users. This model no longer scopes well in light of modern web applications and dynamically changing web sites…" https://www.marcozehe.de/2017/09/29/rethinking-web-accessibility-on-windows/ Accessibility at Trivago By Ian Devlin. "Accessibility is an important topic for anyone who builds things for the web, and one that is neglected far too often…" http://tech.trivago.com/2017/09/26/accessibility-at-trivago/ Accessibility By Information Technology Industry Council (ITI). "…To assist government contracting officials and other buyers in identifying tech products with accessible features, ITI has developed the Voluntary Product Accessibility Template®, or VPAT® 2.0, a reporting format that enables businesses to document product conformance with relevant accessibility standards…" http://www.itic.org/policy/accessibility DOJ Halts Plan to Create Website Accessibility Regulations By Roy Maurer. "Careers sites, applications must still be accessible to candidates with disabilities, advocates say…" https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/website-accessibility-disabilities-regulations-doj.aspx Microsoft Adds Automatic Alt Description to MS-Word By John Eric Brandt. "Apparently in the latest iteration of MS-Office 365, the Word application now provides some 'assistance' when entering an image/picture to a document by creating some suggested Alternative Description language and a dialog box asking you, 'How would you describe this picture and its contents to someone who is blind? (1 - 2 sentences recommended).' Then it gives you a recommended Alt description (not very sophisticated, I might add) which you can/should edit…" https://jebswebs.net/blog/2017/10/microsoft-adds-automatic-alt-description-to-ms-word/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Grid Gotchas And Stumbling Blocks By Rachel Andrew. "In March this year, CSS Grid shipped into production versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari within weeks of each other. It has been great to see how excited people are about finally being able to use it to solve real problems…" https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2017/09/css-grid-gotchas-stumbling-blocks/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Stop Doing User Interviews. Start Having Conversations. By Nicola Rushton. "The case for relaxing in user research…" https://medium.com/@nicola_rushton/stop-doing-user-interviews-start-having-conversations-187dc3328bf User Experience Research and Strength of Evidence By Philip Hodgson. "The concept of 'strength of evidence' plays an important role in all fields of research, but is seldom discussed in the context of user research. We take a closer look at what it means for user experience research, and suggest a taxonomy of research methods based on the strength of the data they return…" http://userfocus.co.uk/articles/strength-of-evidence.html Quantitative vs. Qualitative Usability Testing By Raluca Budiu. "Both these complementary types of user research play important roles in an iterative design cycle. Qualitative research informs the design process; quantitative research provides a basis for benchmarking programs and ROI calculations." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/quant-vs-qual/ An Introduction to UX Benchmarking By Jeff Sauro. "…To start, benchmarking the user experience effectively means first understanding both what benchmarking is, what the user experience is, and then progressing to methods, metrics, and analysis…" https://measuringu.com/benchmark-intro/ +04: EVENTS. Politics and UX: Lessons Learned Working in Higher Ed (panel) October 12, 2017. Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.A. http://uxpamn.org/event-2678450 CADET, NCAM's New Caption and Description Tool October 19, 2017. Online http://easi.cc/clinic.htm#october Dare Mighty Things November 3, 2017. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://daremightythings.co/ DesignOps Summit November 6-8, 2017. New York, New York, U.S.A. http://designopssummit.com/ London UX Conference November 11-17, 2017. London, England, United Kingdom https://www.nngroup.com/training/london/ Intro to Audio Description November 30, 2017. Online http://www.3playmedia.com/resources/webinars/webinar-registration-11-30-2017/ +05: HTML. The Future of Accessibility for Custom Elements By Rob Dodson. "When users of assistive technology, like a screen reader, navigate a web page, it's vitally important that the semantic meaning of the various controls is communicated…" http://robdodson.me/the-future-of-accessibility-for-custom-elements/ Inclusive Components By Heydon Pickering. "A blog trying to be a pattern library. All about designing inclusive web interfaces, piece by piece…" https://inclusive-components.design/ Web Components: The Long Game By Alex Russell. "Mikeal Rogers reached out last week to talk about Web Components, which surprised me, but his follow-up blog post is essential, timely reading…" https://infrequently.org/2017/10/web-components-the-long-game/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. aria-colspan Property By Rakesh Paladugula. "aria-colspan property defines the number of columns a cell spanned within a table, grid or a treegrid…" http://www.maxability.co.in/2017/09/aria-colspan-property/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Essential Image Optimization By Addy Osmani. "We should all be automating our image compression…" https://images.guide/ When Should You Use Which Image Format? JPG? PNG? SVG? By Amber Wilson. "There is a room that contains all there is to know about images…" https://amberwilson.co.uk/blog/jpg-png-svg/ A Welcoming Classroom By James M. Lang. "In 1945 a disabled World War II veteran named Jack Fisher petitioned the city of Kalamazoo, Mich., to make cuts in the street curbs in order to allow him and other wheelchair users to navigate the city more easily…" http://www.chronicle.com/article/A-Welcoming-Classroom/241294 +08: NAVIGATION. Creating Accessible Menus-Part 1 By James Williamson. "I've recently been tweaking my site navigation to make it a bit cleaner and more accessible…" http://www.simpleprimate.com/blog/nav-1 Creating Accessible Menus-Part 2 By James Williamson. "…In the second installment I want to finish up by taking an accessible approach to both indicating the current page and making the menu responsive…" http://simpleprimate.com/blog/nav-2 Tabbed Interfaces By Heydon Pickering. "When you think about it, most of your basic interactions are showing or hiding something somehow…" https://inclusive-components.design/tabbed-interfaces/ +09: TYPOGRAPHY. Keeping Track of Letter-Spacing, Some Guidelines By Eric Bailey. "In this post, I'm going to dive deep into a seemingly simple typesetting topic-effective use of letter-spacing-and how it relates to web typography…" https://css-tricks.com/keeping-track-letter-spacing-guidelines/ +10: USABILITY. Making Flat Design Usable (Video) By Kate Meyer. The hazards of flat design and 5 key UX guidelines for making flat design usable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf42gvU9v80 First Impressions Matter: How Designers Can Support Humans' Automatic Cognitive Processing By Therese Fessenden. "The first visceral reaction to a site's design influence how users perceive relevance, credibility, and even usability. By incorporating this knowledge throughout the design process, designers can make more effective products." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/first-impressions-human-automaticity/ UX vs UI vs IA vs IxD : 4 Confusing Digital Design Terms Defined By Cherry Happy Girl. "Once upon a time, if you said the word 'design', the odds were overwhelmingly likely you were talking about graphic design…" https://medium.com/@xiaoyuzhao_69225/ux-vs-ui-vs-ia-vs-ixd-4-confusing-digital-design-terms-defined-b1ef10e18fee [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.]