+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 13, Issue 41, April 3, 2015. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 41 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: HTML5. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: PHP. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 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. I Turned Off Email Images for a Month...and Here's What I Saw By Kirsti Scott. "About 30% of email clients, as a default, do not download images. If you don't change the default settings and look at an email with images in these programs, all you'll see are text and ALT tags, the alternative text that shows if an image isn't displayed..." https://www.hotdesign.com/marketing/i-turned-off-email-images/ Improving Online Accessibility for Students a Major Issue for Schools By Bridget McCrea. "...'A lot of people just don't think about it and they don't realize that it's our legal obligation,' says Burgstahler. 'It's also our ethical obligation to include students with disabilities in the [conversation] when we decide to give people access to educational content'..." http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/03/27/online-accessibility-520/ Accessibility Wins Launches - Share Your Accessible User Interfaces By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "When I talk with fellow web designers and developers about user interfaces and accessibility, they want to learn more..." http://www.lireo.com/accessibility-wins-launches-share-your-accessible-user-interfaces/ Accessibility Wins By Marcy Sutton. "Showcasing accessible user interfaces..." http://a11ywins.tumblr.com/ Web Accessibility: Is Your Content Ready for Everyone? By Mindy Charski. "Amy Ruell has been blind since birth, but software programs called screen readers help her read web content-that is, if websites are created in a way that makes their information accessible and usable for her, which is not always the case..." http://www.econtentmag.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/Web-Accessibility-Is-Your-Content-Ready-for-Everyone-102447.htm MOOCs for Everyone, but the Deaf By Howard A. Rosenblum. "As a deaf person, these videos are not accessible because not all the videos have captions. Of the very few videos that have captions, many have errors and are not of the appropriate quality. Thousands of videos have no captions at all. As head of a national advocacy organization for deaf and hard of hearing people, I'm astounded that these prestigious schools are not providing equal access. If a small non-profit organization like the NAD can caption its videos, then why can't everyone else? There's nothing really fancy about it. Television shows are broadcast with captions that anyone can turn on..." http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-mooc-access-20150321-story.html Accessibility Roles - Role and Gender Identity By Dylan Barrell. "In accessibility, the user interface development best practice is: if it is a button, just use a button, if its a link, just use a link. This sometimes invokes the question, "What is a link and what is a button?"..." http://unobfuscated.blogspot.com/2015/03/accessibility-roles-role-and-gender.html Scribd Must Comply With The Americans With Disabilities Act By Eric Goldman. "...Such activism has a steep cost. The court's conclusion seems to apply equally to all other online content retailers-a universe of tens of thousands of sites-and could extend to every online retailer. That makes the opinion's potential reach breathtaking, with enormous financial implications..." http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericgoldman/2015/03/26/scribd-must-comply-with-the-americans-with-disabilities-act/ Scribd Opinion and Order By Judge William K. Sessions III. "...Scribd's motion to dismiss is denied..." http://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/vermont/vtdce/2:2014cv00162/24384/30/0.pdf The Low-Vision Experience with an iPad By Ted Drake. "I've met many small business owners with low vision that love using an iPad, or other tablet, as their key device. " http://www.last-child.com/the-low-vision-experience-with-an-ipad/ GOALS Web Accessibility Cost Case Study By Gaining Online Accessible Learning through Self-Study (GOALS). "This report provides the experiences of 6 institutions of higher education and some of the costs they incurred as they worked to improve accessibility on their campus. So what did we learn by these case studies?..." http://www.ncdae.org/goals/costcase/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Accessibility Support for CSS Generated Content By Leonie Watson. "The CSS before/after pseudo-selectors can be used to insert content into a page. In some situations this technique is a useful thing to do, but how do browsers and screen readers handle the generated content? http://tink.uk/accessibility-support-for-css-generated-content/ Test CSS Background Images By David MacDonald. "Here are some examples of CSS background and inline CSS Content images. I've added an aria-label for alternate text and role="img". At the bottom of the page there is a results table with testing on assitive technology for reverse video modes, and screen readers." http://davidmacd.com/blog/css-background-images.html An Introduction to the CSS will-change Property By Nick Salloum. "In this article, we're going to take a look at the CSS will-change property, what it is, when and how to use it, and how not to use it..." http://www.sitepoint.com/introduction-css-will-change-property/ Understanding Flex Direction By Estelle Weyl. "If you need help understanding the main axis versus the cross axis in terms of flex direction, hopefully this helps..." http://www.standardista.com/understanding-flex-direction/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. If Everything is Urgent, Nothing is Urgent By Jason Megginson. "AT CSUN 2015 I had the pleasure of attending many great sessions. As an Accessibility Consultant myself, a quote from the session titled 'Targeting an Exceptional Online Shopping Experience' really resonated with me; 'if everything is urgent, nothing is urgent'..." http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/everything-urgent-nothing-urgent/ Moderated vs. Unmoderated Usability Testing: Which is Better? By Jerry Cao. "When it comes to usability testing, one of the most important decisions you'll make is whether someone should moderate the session..." http://blog.uxpin.com/6342/moderated-vs-unmoderated-usability-testing-better/ 10 Threats to the Quality Of Online Research By Jeff Sauro. "...But just because it's easier to collect data, doesn't mean it's easier to generate high-quality findings..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/ten-threats.php +04: EVENTS. Learn HTML5 from W3C Starts June 1, 2015. Online. https://www.edx.org/course/learn-html5-w3c-w3cx-html5-1x OpenWebCamp August 1, 2015. San Jose, California, U.S.A. http://openwebcamp.com/ +05: HTML5. No More Excuses - a 'HTML5 Now' Talk at Codemotion Rome By Christian Heilmann. "Yesterday I closed up the 'inspiration' track of Codemotion Rome with a talk about the state of browsers and how we as developers make it much too hard for ourselves. You can see the slides on Slideshare and watch a screencast on YouTube..." http://christianheilmann.com/2015/03/29/no-more-excuses-an-html5-now-talk-at-codemotion-rome/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. ES6 Generators in Depth By Axel Rauschmayer. "Generators, a new feature of ECMAScript 6 [4], are functions that can be paused and resumed. This helps with many applications: iterators, asynchronous programming, etc. This blog post explains how generators work and gives an overview of their applications..." http://www.2ality.com/2015/03/es6-generators.html Let Links Be Links By Ross Penman. "...It doesn't matter if somebody visits a website on a $2,000 iMac, or a $50 Android tablet, or the $5 web client of a future we can't even imagine yet-in theory, at least. In practice, it's important to make sure that we don't sacrifice the experiences of a small number of users just so we can slightly improve the experiences of the rest, damaging the universal nature of the web in the process." http://alistapart.com/article/let-links-be-links +07: NAVIGATION. How to Check Broken Links on Your Website By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "Broken links on websites. Nobody wants them..." http://www.lireo.com/check-broken-links-on-your-website/ 3.2.3 Consistent Navigation By Rakesh Paladugula. "Navigational mechanisms that are repeated on multiple Web pages within a set of Web pages occur in the same relative order each time they are repeated, unless a change is initiated by the user. (Level AA)..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2015/03/3-2-3-consistent-navigation/ +08: PHP. PHP Renewed - The New Face of PHP By Eli White. "PHP has evolved significantly since its early days as a templating language. In the first installment of a four-part series on modern-day PHP programming, PHP expert Eli White examines some of the advancements in PHP 5.3 and higher. Get up to speed on namespaces, traits, closures, generators, and more..." http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-php-renewed_1/index.html +09: TYPOGRAPHY. (Font Awesome) Your Icon Fonts are Not Accessible... By Dylan Barrell. "Please do two things: 1) Remove the mis-representation from your web site until you have properly fixed the problem, so that you do not continue to make the web a worse place for people with disabilities, 2) Fix the accessibility problems properly..." https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/6133 +10: USABILITY. The Best Icon is a Text Label By Thomas Byttebier. "...So let me repeat: don't use an icon if its meaning isn't a 100% clear to everyone. When in doubt, skip the icon. Reside to simple copy. A text label is always clearer..." http://thomasbyttebier.be/blog/the-best-icon-is-a-text-label Simplicity Must be the Mantra of the Digital Workplace By Gerry McGovern. "Employees are reaching a breaking point. They are exhausted and overwhelmed, alienated and disengaged. They are cynical and distrustful..." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/simplicity-must-be-mantra-digital-workplace Making Simple Ideas Simpler By Jenny Reeve. "Simplicity, or the lack thereof, is one of the first things users notice as they acquaint themselves with a new interface. To make that first impression positive, UX designers should strive to further simplify even their most seemingly simple designs, not only for the sake of creating a delightful user experience, but also to give their digital product a competitive edge..." http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/making-simple-ideas-simpler/ Native Scrolling By Anselm Hannemann. "...For altering the default scroll speed I honestly couldn't come up with a valid use-case. ..." https://helloanselm.com/2015/altering-scroll-behavior/ Change Blindness: Why People Don't See What Designers Expect Them To See By Kathryn Whitenton. "People often overlook new visual details added to an existing image. This change blindness can affect critical information such as error messages and navigation menus, leading to user confusion and task failure. Luckily, with the right visual presentation you can dramatically reduce the likelihood of change blindness..." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/change-blindness/ +11: XML. The SVG Canvas, Coordinate System, And Viewport By Steven Bradley. "When you see SVG images on the screen you're viewing only part of the canvas on which they're drawn and you view the canvas through the SVG viewport. Canvas and viewport are both independent and connected and their relationship can be confusing and lead to unexpected results at times. That is until you understand the relationship and how to control the connection..." http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/svg-viewport/ Diving into the Deep End - A Discussion on SVG, Angular, and Accessibility By Sam Joehl. "The first session I attended was entitled Diving into the Deep End: A Discussion on SVG, Angular, and Accessibility, presented by the fine Simply Accessible team..." http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/diving-deep-end-discussion-svg-angular-accessibility/ [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.]