+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 14, Issue 09, August 27, 2015. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 09 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. 16: XML. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. RAT By Jonathan Neal. "RAT (Results from Assistive Technology) is a collection of markup patterns and how they are handled by different assistive technology." http://jonathantneal.github.io/rat/ Where to Put Your Search Role By Adrian Roselli. "Clearly you can use other elements instead of a div, and you can nest them in different ways, but what is important is that you do not put the role="search" on the form element..." http://adrianroselli.com/2015/08/where-to-put-your-search-role.html Outsourcing Video Accessibility - The 5 Key Questions By Alex Varley. "Video content is more prevalent and the digital marketing gurus will tell you that good video equates to good search engine optimisation (SEO) rankings and more audience attention than just static content. Even better rankings can be attained through making the video accessible with captioning and audio description. In many cases it can also be a legal/policy requirement." http://www.accessiq.org/news/features/2015/08/outsourcing-video-accessibility-the-5-key-questions Vestibular Disorders and Accessible Animation (Video) By Rachel Nabors. "Many thanks to Greg Tarnoff for coming onto the show to talk about how the current proliferation of animation in web design can have some rather sever negative side effects for users like him with vestibular disorders. In this episode, Greg explains what vestibular disorders are and walks us through sites that do and don't work for him. A must watch for accessibility advocates, web and app designers, and UX professionals. (Video 1 hour 3 minutes minutes)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhnIZh0xwk0 Designing Technology with Accessibility in Mind (Video) By Haben Girma. "Harvard Law's first deafblind graduate, Haben Girma, excelled in large part because people created accessible technology. Haben, who works at Disability Rights Advocates, encourages the development of accessible services and products. Recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House, Haben moves us towards a world where people with disabilities access the same services, on the same devices, and at the same time as non-disabled consumers. Technology designed with accessibility in mind truly transforms the lives of people with disabilities. Through this thoughtful discussion, Haben invites everyone to design products from the ground up with universal access in mind. To learn more about Haben, visit habengirma.com. To learn more about DRA, visit dralegal.org." (Video 41 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44VEwsBfux0 Advocates Want Websites Accessible to Those with Impaired, No Eyesight By Brian Bowling. "...The Justice Department has taken the position that all commercial websites are covered by the law, but it has confused the issue by delaying the release of regulations, originally promised in 2010, that would spell out the accessibility standards for commercial sites. The lack of regulations hasn't kept the agency from intervening in several of the website accessibility lawsuits..." http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/8912515-74/websites-website-lawsuits#axzz3jPd9DF1k +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 3.2.1 On Focus By Rakesh Paladugula. "When any component receives focus, it does not initiate a change of context. (Level A) Description The intention of this checkpoint is to allow the users predict the behavior of user interface components..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2015/08/3-2-1-on-focus/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. What's Holding You Back from Doing UX Design Remotely? By Marg Laing. "In this article, I will explore whether there really is something about UX design that might prevent our doing it well on a distributed team. Then, I'll walk you through some practical steps for getting going with remote work. Finally, I'll explore what UX-specific challenges exist with remote work..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/08/whats-holding-you-back-from-doing-ux-design-remotely.php 7 Steps for More Effective A/B Testing By Spencer Lanoue. "...Here's the framework we use at UserTesting. You can take it, use it, and tweak it to your needs. You don't have to use it word for work, do whatever is best for your team..." https://www.usertesting.com/blog/2015/08/20/7-steps-for-more-effective-ab-testing/ Comparing Between and Within Subjects Studies By Jeff Sauro. "When you're planning a study to compare multiple interfaces, one of the first choices to consider is whether to use a within-subjects or between-subjects approach..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/between-within.php +04: EVENTS. MAX 2015 October 3-7, 2015. Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. http://max.adobe.com/ An Event Apart San Francisco November 2-4, 2015. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://aneventapart.com/event/san-francisco-2015 Confab Higher Ed November 4-6, 2015. New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A. http://confabevents.com/events/higher-ed +05: HTML5. Accessible Names - Label All the Things! (Part 1) By Michelle Williamson. "...Being vigilant about naming things on your site will help make the site tremendously more accessible to screen reader users and there's a good chance it will also help search engines. Use these native HTML5 accessible name properties when available and possible. And when not available or possible, see our blog post on a few WAI-ARIA attributes that fill in the gaps in part 2." http://www.mediacurrent.com/blog/accessible-names-label-all-things-part-1 +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Card Sorting - Defining Related Content Categories By Linnea Ann Williams. "Card sorting is a powerful, hands-on tool that we at Stanford Web Services use for helping content creators iron out either the information architecture of their site (meaning the big buckets of their navigation) or to develop categories for their content..." https://swsblog.stanford.edu/blog/card-sorting-defining-related-content-categories +07: JAVASCRIPT. Five Little-Known Facts about ES5 Object Literals By Axel Rauschmayer. "This blog post describes five little known facts about ECMAScript 5 (ES5) object literals..." http://www.2ality.com/2015/08/object-literals-es5.html Progressive Enhancement is Essential By Dennis Lembree. Thankfully, it seems the importance of Progressive Enhancement is resurfacing due to the 'Internet of Things' and the importance of supporting older and lower-end devices (especially for developing countries where it may be the only option for many users)..." https://medium.com/@dennisl/progressive-enhancement-is-essential-9e258cef87ba +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Interview with Leonie Watson - How Accessibility Influences the Work of Developers and Designers By Von Nicole Buri. "As a diamond sponsor of the Frontend Conference Zurich on 27 and 28 August, we had the exclusive opportunity to conduct interviews with selected speakers..." http://magazin.unic.com/en/2015/08/21/interview-with-leonie-watson-how-accessibility-influences-the-work-of-developers-and-designer/ More Agile, More Problems By Steven Hoober. "...Agile is not a process. It is a software development methodology. How to integrate UX into Agile? As soon as you tell me how to integrate finance or marketing or legal into Agile I'll talk to you about how to do Agile UX, mkay?...I do love the principles of Agile, but principles are not processes..." https://medium.com/@shoobe01/more-agile-more-problems-a5169c0a8b28 Thinking Responsively - A Framework for Future Learning By Paul Robert Lloyd. "Responsive web design changed everything about how we think and work on the web-and five years on, we're still exploring the best ways to approach our practice. If we want a web that is truly universal, we must consider our users, our medium, and our teams in new, adaptable ways. Looking at where we've come from and where we're going, Paul Robert Lloyd proposes a philosophical framework for our work on the responsive web." http://alistapart.com/article/thinking-responsively-a-framework-for-future-learning +09: NAVIGATION. The Hamburger Menu Doesn't Work By James Archer. "It's a beautiful, elegant solution that gets it all wrong, and it's time to move on..." http://deep.design/the-hamburger-menu/ +10: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. US-EU Standards Must be Harmonized to Advance Accessibility By Julie Anderson. "...Enacting a global accessibility standard will free up financial resources, pave the way for innovation and, overall, create a clearer path to accessibility in the U.S. and abroad..." http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/us-eu-standards-must-be-harmonized-advance-accessibility/2015-08-20 +11: TOOLS. YouTube Caption Auditor (YTCA) By Terrill Thompson. "YTCA is a utility to collect stats from one or more YouTube channels. It was designed to collect data related to captioning, but could be extended to support other data collection needs..." https://github.com/terrill/YTCA Quickly Check for Accessibility Errors By Prem Nawaz Khan. "Run your code through Chrome Developer Tool, Axe Engine and HTML Code Sniffer..." http://mpnkhan.github.io/quickcheck/index.html aXe Developer Tools for Firefox By David Sturley. "Add accessibility auditing to the Firefox Developer Tools." https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/axe-devtools/ HTML_CodeSniffer By squizlabs. "HTML_CodeSniffer is a client-side script that checks HTML source code and detects violations of a defined coding standard. HTML_CodeSniffer is written entirely in JavaScript, does not require any server-side processing and can be extended by developers to enforce custom coding standards by creating your own "sniffs"..." In addition a bookmarklet is provided." http://squizlabs.github.io/HTML_CodeSniffer/ +12: USABILITY. Infinite Scrolling and Accessibility (It's Usually Bad) By Dennis Lembree. "Experts say don't do infinite scrolling, or be extremely careful in doing so. I completely agree. Infinite scrolling creates accessibility and usability problems. Below are checkpoints, issues and suggestions from a few resources..." http://www.webaxe.org/infinite-scrolling-and-accessibility/ The User is Always Right? Wrong! By Stefan Rossler. "...We want to watch people using our designs. We don't need their opinions, they're biased anyway. We want to see what they do and we want to understand, what they are thinking while their doing it. That's the information that's always right. Not the users themselves." https://userbrain.net/blog/the-user-is-always-right-wrong Design Minimally Viable Interactions By Gerry McGovern. "The most elegant interaction is so minimal it is almost invisible." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/design-minimally-viable-interactions Preventing User Errors - Avoiding Unconscious Slips by Page Laubheimer. "Users are often distracted from the task at hand, so prevent unconscious errors by offering suggestions, utilizing constraints, and being flexible..." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/slips Very Large Touchscreens - UX Design Differs From Mobile Screens By Kara Pernice. "Only a few mobile-design skills and design recommendations translate well to designing for very large touchscreens, as found in kiosks and other nonmobile use cases. Users' field of vision, arm motion, affordance, and privacy are a few of the different considerations for such screens with up to 380 times the area of a smartphone." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/very-large-touchscreen-ux-design/ Designing UX for Natural User Interfaces By Jennifer Winter. "...In this article I'll cover a few basic principles of NUI, and how you can use them to design great UX..." https://www.usertesting.com/blog/2015/08/24/designing-ux-for-natural-user-interfaces/ The Data-Informed Customer Journey By Pamela Pavliscak. "...The experiences people have with other sites and apps can drive them to your site or app, frame the questions they have, shape their expectations for category names or navigation items, and more..." http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2015/08/the-data-informed-customer-journey.php [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: 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.]