[webdev] Web Design Update: August 1, 2013

Thu Aug 1 06:10:53 CDT 2013

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 06, August 1, 2013.

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: COLOR.
04: DRUPAL.
05: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: EVENTS.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: TOOLS.
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.

Louisiana Tech University Concerning Inaccessible Course Materials
By Ahead.org.
"...the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a settlement agreement
with Louisiana Tech University resolving a complaint about
inaccessible course materials. The DOJ's summary of the obligation
sends a clear message...What does this mean for our campuses?..."
http://ahead.org/DOJ_Louisiana_Tech_Settlement

Louisiana Tech U. Settles With U.S. Over Claims That It Violated
Disabilities Act
By Nick DeSantis.
"Louisiana Tech University will pay a student a total of $23,543 in
damages and make its Web sites and course materials more accessible in
order to resolve allegations that it violated the Americans With
Disabilities Act, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on
Tuesday..."
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/louisiana-tech-u-settles-with-u-s-over-claims-that-it-violated-disabilities-act-2/63583

Faculty Member Says "HELP - I can't tag my PDF articles"
By Cyndi Rowland.
"...There are many ways for non-technical people to determine if the
PDF they wish to make accessible contains true text. Here are two
ideas I shared with her and both were easy for her to implement.
First, I asked her to see if she could select and copy some portion of
text, and second I told her to try to search for some text element on
the page. Both were successful strategies for her to determine which
pages she could, and could not tag. Getting focus directly onto the
text is critical if you will add an element to it (e.g., Header,
ordered list)..."
http://ncdae.org/blog/i-cant-tag-my-pdf-articles/

About Carousels and ARIA Tabs
By Dennis Lembree.
"...If you absolutely must implement a carousel, here are some
design/interaction tips..."
http://www.webaxe.org/carousels-and-aria-tabs/

Techniques for Labeling Standard HTML Form Controls
By Sailesh Panchang.
"In this post, Sailesh gives detailed information about how to code
standard HTML form controls, making sure they are correctly labelled
for accessibility..."
http://www.deque.com/techniques-labeling-standard-html-form-controls

Jaws, IE and the Forms Region Bug
By Leonie Watson.
"There is an unusual problem with Jaws and Internet Explorer that
causes the word 'region' to be announced before every field in a form.
Fortunately there is a workaround until the problem itself is
resolved..."
http://tink.co.uk/2013/07/jaws-ie-the-forms-region-bug/

Learning to Love Headings in Microsoft Word
By Jonathan	Whiting.
"Below I offer a few reasons why using true headings will make life
easier not just for individuals with disabilities, but for you, the
document creator..."
http://ncdae.org/blog/love-headings/

Reporting on Your Web Accessibility Findings: It Can Be Easy Using the
GOALS Tool
By National Center on Disability and Access to Education (NCDAE).
"...This resource will walk you through creating and understanding the
structure of the Administrative Report. Actual reports are also
provided as examples..."
http://ncdae.org/resources/tips/reporting.php

Tracking Web Accessibility Success
By Karl Groves.
"...Prioritization lends itself directly to the ability to track
successes in our accessibility efforts..."
http://www.karlgroves.com/2013/07/30/tracking-web-accessibility-success/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Bookmarklets for Accessibility Testing
By Zoe Mickley Gillenwater.
"I've created two simple bookmarklets to reveal whether CSS background
images are being used in an inaccessible way on a page..."
http://zomigi.com/blog/bookmarklets-for-accessibility-testing/

 Failure of Success Criterion 1.1.1 due to using CSS to include images
that convey important information
By W3C WCAG.
"Text alternatives are necessary for people who cannot see images that
convey important information. Therefore, it is a failure to use this
property to add images to convey important information. This failure
would apply equally in a case where the background image was declared
in the HTML style attribute, as well as in a case where the background
image declaration was created dynamically in a client script..."
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20-TECHS/F3.html

When Do Elements Take the Focus?
By James Edwards.
"...you should never prevent elements from taking the focus, nor
should you remove focus indication when the user Tabs to an element
(unless of course you replace it with something else)...."
http://www.sitepoint.com/when-do-elements-take-the-focus/

CSS3 Transition Property Basics
By Craig Buckler.
"In the second part in this series about CSS3 transitions, we'll take
a detailed look at the properties. But first, we need to know what can
and cannot be animated..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/css3-transition-properties/

+03: COLOR.

What's With All the Gray?
By John Brandt.
"...combining gray on white is not a good combination when it comes to
reading or viewing web content or applications. Add to this the
penchant to now use a pastel variant of blue for links and highlights,
and we have significant issues with visual perception..."
http://jebswebs.net/blog/2013/07/whats-with-all-the-gray/

Contrast Rebellion
By Zoltan Gocza and Richard Gazdik.
"...Look at these websites. They look fabulous indeed but how good is
that if people can't read them?..."
http://contrastrebellion.com/

+04: DRUPAL.

Twin Cities Drupal Camp Accessibility Testing, Discussions and Sprinting
By Jesse Beach.
"On Friday, July 19th, 2013, two usability tests were conducted in the
labs of the University of Minnesota...Executive takeaways from
testing: Drupal is not as accessible as we even dared to hope. Content
creation is painful and at points impossible for a non-sighted user.
Something as fundamental as the content creation process should
present the least number of barriers. Most of the issues encountered
stemmed from interface issues such as the inaccessible structure of
the Overlay module. Form validation errors are invisible to a
non-sighted user..."
https://www.acquia.com/blog/twin-cities-drupal-camp-accessibility-testing-discussions-and-sprinting

+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Three Questions You Shouldn't Ask During User Research
By Jared Spool.
"The participant was struggling. While he was a high-volume customer
who had bought tons from this site in the past, today he wasn't
getting along with the checkout process. Confusion happened in both
directions: the shopper didn't understand what the site was trying to
tell him and the site definitely didn't understand what he wanted..."
http://www.uie.com/articles/three_questions_not_to_ask/

+06: EVENTS.

Accessibility Summit
September 10-11, 2013.
Online.
http://environmentsforhumans.com/2013/accessibility-summit/

Mobile UX
September 12, 2013.
Online.
http://environmentsforhumans.com/2013/mobile-ux-summit/

Generate Conference
September 13, 2013.
London, England, United Kingdom
http://www.generateconf.com/

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

Make Your Widgets Sing with ARIA
By Jason Kiss.
Jason's WDCNZ presentation sides.
http://accessibleculture.org/research-files/WDCNZ-25July2013/make-your-widgets-sing-with-aria.html

A Meta Style Guide for JavaScript
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"...this blog post describes commonly accepted meta style rules and
conventions that I like that are controversial. The idea is to help
you make a more informed decision about what is right for you..."
http://www.2ality.com/2013/07/meta-style-guide.html

The classList API
By Derek Johnson.
"I have to be honest with you: I feel like a fraud writing about
JavaScript for HTML5 Doctor..."
http://html5doctor.com/the-classlist-api/

+08: TOOLS.

Outline CSS Background Images and Remove CSS Background Images Bookmarklets
By Zoe Mickley Gillenwater.
"One bookmarklet outlines elements that have a background image set,
and the other removes all background images. The idea is to use either
or both of these to see whether any of the informational images on the
page have been set as CSS background images instead of foreground
images (the <img> element in the HTML). This is an accessibility
problem, since CSS background images can't have alt text to explain
the information contained within them. Background images should be
reserved for either purely decorative images or informative images
that repeat information found elsewhere in the text..."
http://zomigi.com/demo/background-images_remove_outline.html

+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

Text Re-Sizing
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"...To ensure that the text can be resized accurately without loss or
functionality, the units of measurements should be determined in
relative size...."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2013/07/text-re-sizing/

+10: USABILITY.

There are Two Important Points on Every List
By David Anderson.
"Lists. They're tremendously popular. Web writing experts tell us to
break out any content that could be considered a list. List are so
important to web content that they have their own html elements..."
http://www.attentionmessageaction.com/there-are-two-important-points-on-every-list/

What Will We Build on a Foundation of Flat Design?
By Steven Bradley.
"Over the last few years web designers have been returning to
fundamentals. Focus has shifted from skeuomorphic details like
reflections to the basics of type, layout, and color. Much of this
shift can be seen in the recent trend of flat design, which I think
signals a new foundation for web designers. The question I want to
address today is what will we build on top of that foundation?.."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/building-on-flat-design-foundation/

[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

Dreamweaver Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/dreamweaver.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

Flash Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/flash.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.

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+ 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 at d.umn.edu

[Issue ends.]