+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 28, January 9, 2015. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 28 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: DRUPAL. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: HTML5. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: TOOLS. 10: USABILITY. 11: XML. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. You Don't Have Accessibility Problems, You Have Quality Problems By Karl Groves. "...ignorance doesn't absolve you of the responsibility of doing a good job and accessibility - like security, SEO, cross-platform reliability, and meeting stated business requirements - is part of doing a good job..." http://www.karlgroves.com/2015/01/01/you-dont-have-accessibility-problems-you-have-quality-problems/ Basic Screen Reader Commands for Accessibility Testing By Leonie Watson. "When you test your website with a screen reader there are a few basic commands you should know. Just remember not to make design decisions based only on your tests. Even with these useful screen reader commands, you won't experience things in the same way as a person who uses a screen reader all the time..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2015/01/basic-screen-reader-commands-for-accessibility-testing/ Notes on Providing alt Text for Twitter Images By Steve Faulkner. "...What you can do pretty easily is provide the alt text as text in the same tweet as the image (if it fits) or if it is a tweet from someone else or there is not enough space to provide in the same tweet you can reply to the tweet with an alt text..." http://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2015/01/notes-on-providing-alt-text-for-twitter-images/ To Hell With Compliance By Karl Groves. "...if you think you can do only the bare minimum and call it 'compliant', you're mistaken. What you need to be concerned with is the experience of the user: give a damn about what you're doing, and make it usable. Then you'll be compliant." http://www.karlgroves.com/2015/01/06/to-hell-with-compliance/ Defining Multiple Captions and alt Text for Responsive Images By Ian Devlin. "With the welcome rise of the element and srcset attribute, we now have control over what images are loaded when, allowing us to make our images more responsive, and even to change the image entirely based on screen size. Of course showing a different image in this case is not recommended, but it is possible that you might want to change the focal point of the image, showing less of a larger image, and highlighting a particular object or person within it. This is all well and good, but what about the image's caption or alt text? How can we provide different captions or alt text per image, should the need arise?..." http://www.iandevlin.com/blog/2014/12/html5/defining-multiple-captions-and-alt-text-for-responsive-images Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability; Accessibility of Web Information and Services of Public Accommodations By Federal Register. "The Department of Justice is considering proposed revisions to the regulation implementing title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in order to address the obligations of public accommodations to make goods, services, facilities, privileges, accommodations, or advantages they offer via the Internet, specifically at sites on the World Wide Web (Web), accessible to individuals with disabilities..." https://www.federalregister.gov/regulations/1190-AA61/nondiscrimination-on-the-basis-of-disability-accessibility-of-web-information-and-services-of-public ADA Defense Lawyer - New ADA Standards for Website Accessibility By Jim Butler. "...The DOJ's issuance of website standards is not a matter of 'if' but 'when'...The best approach to avoiding an ADA lawsuit is to conduct an ADA compliance and prevention survey of your business..." http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=daf28278-37c7-47d4-876c-f5b2d03165f9 The Difference Between Assembly Line Accessibility and Intuitive Accessibility, and Why This is Important By Bryan Garaventa. "This came up recently, and I wish to outline the differences between these two schools of thought, because they directly affect the learning process for engineers..." https://www.linkedin.com/groups/difference-between-Assembly-Line-Accessibility-4512178.S.5958872013232680963 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS, Accessibility, and You (Video) By Derek Featherstone. Derek's CSS Dev Conference presentation. http://teamtreehouse.com/library/css-accessibility-and-you Designing For Print With CSS By Rachel Andrew. "If you mention printing with CSS to many people who work on the web, print style sheets1 are the use that comes to mind. We are all well used to creating a style sheet that is called upon when a web document is printed. These style sheets ensure that the print version is legible and that we don't cause a user to print out huge images. However, CSS is also being used to format books, catalogs and brochures - content that may never have been designed to be a web page at all..." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/01/07/designing-for-print-with-css/ 8 Simple CSS Hover Effects By Sara Vieira. "ith support for CSS3 increasing with each new release for every browser, and those tiresome CSS2-only browsers slowly dropping off the usage charts, we have far more options for hover effects and transitions in general. Almost all the calls to action that you see on the Web use some form of hover effect, because they draw the eye and make a website feel more engaging..." http://www.developerdrive.com/2015/01/8-simple-css-hover-effects/ Conditional Form Fields with CSS By Christian Heilmann. "...Once you publish something like this, you will get a lot of tweets that this is not accessible. The same happened here, and it doesn't matter that I wrote about the shortcomings in the first version of this post. The debate is interesting and relevant. So let's break it down..." http://christianheilmann.com/2015/01/08/quick-tip-conditional-form-fields-with-css/ 5 Ways to Not Shoot Yourself in the Foot with CSS By Brent Jackson. "1. Don't make assumptions..." https://medium.com/@jxnblk/5-ways-to-not-shoot-yourself-in-the-foot-with-css-8d3c84c94364 CSS You Can Get Excited About in 2015 By Rachel Andrew. "In this article I'll take a look at some newer modules and individual CSS features that are gaining browser support. Not all of these are features you'll be able to use in production immediately, and some are only available behind experimental flags. However you'll find plenty of things here that you can begin to play with - even if only during a prototyping stage of development..." http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2015/01/css-you-can-get-excited-about-in-2015/ +03: DRUPAL. Changing and Using CSS With Drupal By CSS Newbies. "Whether your Drupal theme is 6 or 7, or you're using some of the more popular themes like Zen, Skeleton, TheCompany, or FontFolio - Changing the CSS in your theme can be a bit confusing at first..." http://www.cssnewbie.com/changing-and-using-css-with-drupal/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Usability Testing Goals - Knowing 'Why' Before 'How' By Jerry Cao. "Like all significant undertakings, you need to go into usability testing with a plan. But as you'll see, a little extra time planning at the beginning can pay off in the end..." http://www.sitepoint.com/usability-testing-goals-knowing/ How Confident Do You Need to be in Your Research? By Jeff Sauro. "Every estimate we make from a sample of customer data contains error. Confidence intervals tell us how much faith we can have in our estimates..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/confidence-levels.php 17 Usability Testing Myths and Misconceptions By Jim Ross. "Usability testing has been around so long that it's the most well-known and most frequently practiced user research method. So I find it amazing that there are still so many misconceptions about usability testing. In this column, I'll debunk the most common myths and misconceptions that I've encountered over the years..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/01/17-usability-testing-myths-and-misconceptions.php +05: EVENTS. WebVisions Portland May 12-15, 2015. Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. http://www.webvisionsevent.com/portland/ Confab Central May 20-22, 2015. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. http://confabevents.com/events/central UX London 2015 May 20-22, 2015. London, England, United Kingdom http://2015.uxlondon.com/ An Event Apart San Diego June 8-10, 2015. San Diego, California, U.S.A. http://aneventapart.com/event/san-diego-2015 UX Scotland June 10-12, 2015. Edinburgh, Scotland http://uxscotland.net/2015/ +06: HTML5. Accessible and Responsive HTML5 Video Player By Laura Kalbag. "...You can download, and find all the usage instructions, for our Responsive Accessible HTML5 Video Player from our repository...And again, a huge thank you to Dennis Lembree, for giving us such a solid foundation upon which I could build." https://ind.ie/about/blog/accessible-video-player/ HTML 5 Image Description Extension; New Web Accessibility Tutorial on Images By Geoff Freed. "Following last month's ruling on the inclusion of @longdesc in HTML5, the W3C has moved the HTML5 Image Description Extension forward to Proposed Recommendation status..." http://blog.diagramcenter.org/?p=1751 +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Top 3 IA Questions about Navigation Menus By Kathryn Whitenton. "The number and order of navigation categories, and use of hover menus for touchscreens are frequently asked questions that arise when organizing information on a website or application." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ia-questions-navigation-menus/ Learning from Closed Card Sorts with Different Inputs By Kevin Sheldon. "The card sort is one of the most common research techniques for developing information architectures. The concept is pretty straightforward: you ask participants to place various items into different categories and, by doing this, get a sense of what pieces of content should go where. As with many research techniques, however, the reality is more complicated. In fact, entire books have been written about the subject..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/01/learning-from-closed-card-sorts-with-different-inputs.php +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Beyond alt-text (Larry Goldberg Interview) By Sara Hendren. "Yahoo is searching for two front-end mobile and web engineers...These new hires need to know more than the existing accessibility team and teach us what's new and what's next. This is the kind of knowledge universities should be adding to their design and engineering curricula." https://medium.com/@ablerism/beyond-alt-text-103b00eec89 Adaptive Web Design - Crafting Rich Experiences with Progressive Enhancement By Aaron Gustafson. The first addition of Aaron's book is available. http://adaptivewebdesign.info/1st-edition/ +09: TOOLS. Access Monitor By Joe Dolson. "Test your WordPress site for accessibility compliance. Run on-demand tests or schedule a weekly accessibility check." https://wordpress.org/plugins/access-monitor/ +10: USABILITY. 20 Things You Can Do This Year to Improve Your User's Experience By David Travis. "The new year is as good a time as any to review and improve the way you work. With a good user experience now widely seen as the key attribute of many high-tech products, it makes sense to review your own products to see how you can give them that user experience edge. Here are 20 quick, simple and virtually free ideas you can apply in this new year..." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/improve_your_users_experience.html Checkboxes, Passwords and Magical Incantations By Alex Walker. "...All this time we've been telling our computers how to think, they may have been doing the same to us." http://www.sitepoint.com/masking-passwords-magical-incantations/ +11: XML. SVG Basics-How to Work with Scalable Vector Graphics By Steven Bradley. "...Whenever I talk about responsive images, I mention that where possible, scalable vector graphics are a preferred option to bitmap images. The last time I offered the advice, I realized I didn't know as much about SVG as I should." http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/svg-basics/ [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.]