+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 14, Issue 14, October 1, 2015. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 14 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: JAVASCRIPT. 08: TOOLS. 09: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. My Slides from Accessibility Camp NYC By Adrian Roselli. "If the embedded slides are not working, you can get to them directly at SlideShare. There is also a video of my talk (and all the other talks) available..." http://adrianroselli.com/2015/09/my-slides-from-accessibility-camp-nyc.html 10 Short Videos to Improve Document Accessibility By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "Yesterday Microsoft announced a 10-part video series focused on improving the accessibility of documents. Each video is two-five minutes long, highlighting specific tips for creating and editing documents that are accessible for all..." http://www.lireo.com/10-short-videos-improve-document-accessibility/ Discussion of U.S. and Worldwide Issues of Cognitive Accessibility By John Rochford. "Yesterday, Neil Milliken and Debra Ruh, members of the W3C's Cognitive and Learning Disabilities Accessibility Task Force, interviewed Andrew Imparato, Executive Director of the U.S. Association of University Centers on Disabilities as part of their AXSchat series..." https://clearhelper.wordpress.com/2015/09/29/discussion-of-u-s-and-worldwide-issues-of-cognitive-accessibility/ Making Your Website Design Accessible - Here's What a Blind Accessibility Expert Has to Say on the Topic By Karol K. "Website accessibility is a tough topic. On one hand, there's a lot of what can be considered common knowledge advice. But on the other, we felt that if we're going to cover it, we need to go above that..." https://blogs.adobe.com/dreamweaver/2015/09/making-your-website-design-accessible.html VoiceOver iOS HTML4, HTML5, & WAI-ARIA Accessibility Support By Paul J. Adam. http://pauljadam.com/demos/voiceover-ios-html-aria-support.html ADA and the Web for Retailers - Technical Requirements By Tom Toombs. "... Notable recent settlements and consent decrees, including several with the DoJ enforcement division, have utilized WCAG 2.0 Level AA as the technical standard for accessibility. This lines up with other Federal rulemaking in the U.S. and International regulatory activities all of which point to the WCAG 2.0 AA requirements as the default standards for digital accessibility..." http://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/ada-and-the-web-for-retailers-technical-requirements/ Legal Settlement Agreements that Reference WCAG 2.0 By Laura Carlson. This page documents legal settlement agreements that reference the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/wcagwg/settlements/ IT Accessibility Risk Statements and Evidence by Topic By Laura Carlson. The purpose of this page is to help identify accessibility risks to consider in risk management process. It provides Electronic and Information Technology (EIT) accessibility risk statements and evidence by topic. http://www.d.umn.edu/~lcarlson/atteam/reports/litigation/risks.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Back to the :roots By Simon Simurai. "The cascade in CSS is a curse and blessing at the same time. It usually works quite well, but there are issues that let people get all worked up and ask the question Do We Even Need CSS Anymore. I can somewhat relate to that - but I also think it's not the cascade alone and also about fighting specificity. Not running into issues with specificity is hard. Almost as hard as pronouncing that word." http://simurai.com/blog/2015/09/09/back-to-the-roots/ How To Nest Selectors And Properties In Sass By Steven Bradley. "Do you want to write CSS that's well organized, easier to read, and easier to maintain? Nesting is a feature of Sass that can help you keep related selectors and properties together to make your code more readable and maintainable." http://vanseodesign.com/css/how-to-nest-selectors-and-properties-in-sass/ +03: DRUPAL. The Lost Art of Switchboarding/A HTML Savior By Niels Matthijs. "...I've been working on two separate projects, one made in Drupal 7, the other one made in Drupal 8. While 8 is definitely more front-end dev friendly, I pretty much ended up using the same methodology to output the desired html. The approach I ended up with also taught me a thing or two about how I wanted to structure my css work in future projects. For a while now I've been meaning to rethink the way I handle css, the Drupal work actually showed me a proper way to go forward with that..." http://www.onderhond.com/blog/switchboarding-between-cms-html-css Is Drupal Dying? By Neerav Mehta. "wo weeks back, I was over at eBay when one of the product managers we work with interjected "I will be really sad if 3 years from now, you are still stuck in Drupal.".." http://redcrackle.com/blog/drupal-dying +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Mastering User Interviews - Never Ask Users What They Want By Cassandra Michael. "...Listening to your users can be one of your most powerful tools. However, securing quality feedback that will propel your product ahead of the curve requires a well-designed interview process..." http://blog.usabilla.com/user-interviews-never-ask-users-what-they-want/ +05: EVENTS. OZeWAI 2015 November 25-27, 2015. Canberra, Australia. http://www.ozewai.org/index.php/en/ Paper Submission: October 23, 2015. Contact: v.conway@webkeyit.com +06: HTML5. Easy Content Organisation with HTML5 By Steve Faulkner. "Typically designers and web developers divide web pages into macro content areas (let's call them regions)..." https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2015/09/easy-content-organisation-with-html5/ Sectioning Content in HTML5 - div or section or article? By Ire Aderinokun. "HTML5 was a major stepping stone for the concept of semantic code. It really championed the idea that how your document is structured and what tags you use should convey meaning to user agents. Among others, the
and
elements were introduced as a way to section your content in a more meaningful way than a regular
. But when should we use these new elements, and when is a regular
preferrable?..." http://bitsofco.de/2015/sectioning-content-in-html5/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. aria-posinset (property) By Rakesh Paladugula. "Aria-posinset property defines an element's number or position in the current set of listitems or treeitems. Defining aria-posinset is not required if all elements in the set are present in the DOM..." http://www.maxability.co.in/2015/09/aria-posinset-property/ Script-Based Web Accessibility By Cynthia Shelly. "This is a proposal for a set of User Intention Events that build on ARIA to extend accessibility functionality to complex, scripted web applications. It supports use cases where markup-based solutions have proven impossible, difficult or costly to implement." https://github.com/cyns/wapa/blob/master/ScriptAccessibility.md#script-based-web-accessibility What Even is a Table? A Quick Look at Accessibility APIs (Video) By Edd Sowden. "Let's talk about how to make your single page JavaScript app accessible to as many people as possible. We will cover the tools that you have available to you today to ensure that you are doing the best job possible. I will show how checking your accessibility isn't as scary as you first thought and give you some practical tips and tools you can use to improve your sites today..." https://vimeo.com/139062429 +08: TOOLS. NoSquint (FireFox Add-On) By Jason Tackaberry. "NoSquint allows you to adjust the text-only and full-page (both text and images) zoom levels as well as color settings both globally (for all sites) and per site." https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nosquint/ +09: USABILITY. People Read Only 60% Of An Online Article By Susan Weinschenk. "Tony Haile (CEO of Chartbeat - a company that analyzes real-time web analytics) analyzed 2 billion online interactions, most of them from online articles and news sites, and found that 55 percent of the time people spend less than 15 seconds on a page, which means they're not reading the news articles..." http://www.blog.theteamw.com/2015/09/28/people-read-only-60-of-an-online-article/ Flat Design - Its Origins, Its Problems, and Why Flat 2.0 Is Better for Users By Kate Meyer. "Flat design is a web-design style that became popular around 2012. It is still widely used today, and its misuse can cause serious usability problems. One of the biggest usability issues introduced by flat design is the lack of signifiers on clickable elements." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-design/ Stop Your Team Using Technical Terms and Jargon By Leisa Reichelt. "Most weeks I am ridiculed by someone for insisting on plain language - avoiding acronyms and technical language / jargon in particular. People tell me that I'm slowing the team down by making them use proper words, and that their end users or stakeholders expect them to use technical language..." http://www.disambiguity.com/stop-your-team-using-technical-terms-and-jargon/ iOS 9 App Switching and the Back-to-App Button By Raluca Budiu. "App switching in iOS 9 can disorient users in multiple ways. Simple design fixes can significantly improve the user experience." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ios-9-back-to-app-button/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +10: 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.]