+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 14, Issue 25, December 17, 2015. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 25 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: BOOKS. 03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 04: COLOR. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: HTML5. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. 13: XML. SECTION TWO: 14: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. The Web Accessibility Basics By Maro Zehe. "...here it is, my list of absolute web accessibility basics every web developer should know about..." https://www.marcozehe.de/2015/12/14/the-web-accessibility-basics/ How to Create More Accessible Content, Part 1 - Copywriting By Megan Zlock. "When creating a website, I put a lot of effort into making every feature and every piece of content on the site as accessible as I can..." https://viget.com/advance/how-to-create-more-accessible-content-part-1 reCAPTCHA Accessibility reVISTED By Terrill Thompson. "...The experience described above isn't terrible. Google has improved the markup significantly over the last year and it is possible for most users, including screen reader users, to successfully complete the CAPTCHA. However, there are still problems..." http://terrillthompson.com/blog/682 There's One Setting You Need to Change on Your YouTube Channel Right Now! By Michael Lockrey. "YouTube and Google have recently rolled out fan-based captioning (and subtitling) support to all channels..." https://medium.com/@mlockrey/there-s-one-setting-you-need-to-change-on-your-youtube-channel-right-now-325170cdfac4#.x0oi05lcu Accessibility Advocacy and Pragmatism By Pratik Patel. "...We find ourselves living in an age where issues upstage solutions, idealism upstages pragmatism, and volubility upstages quiet, unexaggerated practicality. It is our responsibility to advocate without succumbing to notions of a single solution to a problem." https://medium.com/@ppatel/accessibility-advocacy-and-pragmatism-f848602155ae#.497xagh75 How to Make Videos Accessible to the Blind by Adding Described Audio (Video) By ddblue0. "This is a brief tutorial explaining how to make your videos and video podcasts accessible to the blind by adding an audio description track." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1siUNBsR_Gg&feature=youtu.be Digital Accessibility Legal Update, December 2015 By Lainey Feingold. "...This update includes Department of Justice activity, the settlement of cases against Scribd and the General Services Administration, Structured Negotiation with Humana, an important new voting rights case, and other developments...." http://lflegal.com/2015/12/legal-update-december15/ Advocates for Disabled Sue Husted Over Voting, Website Problems By Alan Johnson. "An agency advocating for the disabled has sued Secretary of State Jon Husted for allegedly denying voters who are blind equal access to absentee voting and his state website..." http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/12/07/advocates-for-disabled-sue-husted.html Complaint (PDF) http://www.disabilityrightsohio.org/sites/default/files/sites/default/files/u62/Hindel_v_Husted_complaint_12-7-15.pdf The U.S. DOJ Made A Poor Decision To Delay Web Accessibility Guidelines By David Bolton. "...To put it simply, walking a fine line between what they can do and what they should do. Internet accessibility guidelines already exist and the majority of technology leaders are making sure that their products are accessible to all, but the ongoing issue of mobile and Web accessibility is still a grey area in the U.S. And until the rules and regulations are set out in black and white, digital accessibility will remain exactly what the government wants it to be ...a topic of debate." http://arc.applause.com/2015/12/04/united-states-doj-web-accessibility-guidelines/ Lighten Up, Accessible Web By Anna Belle Leiserson. "I have a confession. There's an elephant in my room. The problem is I don't want to be unkind; so day after day, month after month, I tiptoe around it, speaking of it only behind closed doors..." http://www.happywebdiva.com/2015/12/08/lighten-up-accessible-web/ +02: BOOKS. Meiert, Jens Oliver. The Little Book of HTML/CSS Coding Guidelines O'Reilly, 2015. http://www.oreilly.com/web-platform/free/little-book-html-css-coding-guidelines.csp +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Grid, Flexbox, Box Alignment - Our New System for Layout By Rachel Andrew. "...in 2016 we should be seeing it in a new improved form ready for our use in browsers." https://24ways.org/2015/grid-flexbox-box-alignment-our-new-system-for-layout/ Styling Select Elements with Padding By James Aylett. "...Here's some CSS to style various form controls..." http://tartarus.org/james/diary/2015/12/13/styling-select-elements-with-padding +04: COLOR. Designing with Contrast By Mark Mitchell. "When an appetite for aesthetics over usability becomes the bellwether of user interface design, it's time to reconsider who we're designing for..." https://24ways.org/2015/designing-with-contrast/ +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Complete Guide to Scenarios - Part One By Niel Turner. "...In this 2 part guide to scenarios you'll learn what scenarios are, why you should be using them, what forms they can take and how you too can use scenarios to design for the real world..." http://www.uxforthemasses.com/scenarios-part-one/ How Reliable Are Self-Reported Task Completion Rates? By Jeff Sauro. "...As expected, self-reported task-completion rates are much higher than verified task-completion rates. This analysis found..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/self-reported-rates.php +06: EVENTS. Information Accessibility Design and Policy (IADP) Begins January 16, 2016. Online. http://online.ahs.illinois.edu/iadp/ 13th International Web for All Conference April 11-13, 2016. Montreal, Canada http://www.w4a.info/2016/ Accessibility Summit April 15-16, 2016. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. http://accessibilitysummit.org/ Generate April 22, 2016. New York, New York, U.S.A. http://www.generateconf.com/new-york-2016 Future of Web Design April 25-27, 2016. London, England, United Kingdom http://futureofwebdesign.com/london-2016 +07: HTML5. HTML Developers - Please Consider By Steve Faulkner. "...ARIA allows developers to re-invent and extend native HTML features in meaningful ways. But like all bolt-on technologies its features are brittle compared to its built-in counterparts..." http://html5doctor.com/html-developers-please-consider/ Native Form Elements By Joshua Jenkins. "This is what every HTML5 form element looks like on your current operating system and browser." http://nativeformelements.com/ The Header Element By Richard Clark (Updated by Steve Faulkner, December 2015). "...one of these the
element is what we'll be covering in this post. We'll talk about when to use it, when not to use it, its must haves and must not haves..." http://html5doctor.com/the-header-element/ +08: JAVASCRIPT. Interaction Is an Enhancement By Aaron Gustafson. "...The fundamental problem with viewing JavaScript as a given-which these frameworks do-is that it creates the illusion of control..." http://alistapart.com/article/interaction-is-an-enhancement A Pause to Refresh the Web? By Simon St. Laurent. "...It's not the end of the Web, by any means. The Web is not JavaScript and JavaScript is not the Web. Web developers have even had approaches for dealing with this situation - progressive enhancement - for more than a decade..." https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/a-pause-to-refresh-the-web Making Accessibility Simpler, With Ally.js By Rodney Rehm. "...You can care about accessibility issues without being affected by a disability yourself. In many ways, making your apps and sites accessible benefits everyone. ally.js helps you accomplish that..." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/12/making-accessibility-simpler/ Simplified JavaScript Jargon By Hugo Giraudel et al. "Simplified JavaScript Jargon (short SJSJ) is a community-driven attempt at explaining the loads of buzzwords making the current JavaScript ecosystem in a few simple words. The idea is not to replace individual documentations, but to act as some kind of glossary that can be easily referrenced..." https://github.com/HugoGiraudel/SJSJ How to Schedule Background Tasks in JavaScript By Craig Buckler. "If you remember nothing else about JavaScript, never forget this: it blocks..." http://www.sitepoint.com/how-to-schedule-background-tasks-in-javascript/ +09: MISCELLANEOUS. A Brief(ish) History of the Web Universe - Part I The Pre-Web By Brian Kardell. "...No themes, no punch, just history that I hope I can use to help explain where my own perspectives on a whole bunch of things draw from..." https://briankardell.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/a-briefish-history-of-the-web-universe-part-i-the-pre-web/ A Brief(ish) History of the Web Universe - Part II Time By Brian Kardell. "...Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN which was, by most measures, pretty large..." https://briankardell.wordpress.com/2015/12/07/a-briefish-history-of-the-web-universe-part-ii-time/ History of the Web By Bob Hopgood, 2001. "Understanding how an activity started and developed frequently gives a much greater insight into why things are as they are..." http://www.w3.org/2012/08/history-of-the-web/origins.htm How Many Writers Do We Need for Our Website Project? By Lagom Strategy. "This handy calculator will stop you from underestimating your content challenge and delaying your project..." http://www.lagomstrategy.net/content-production-calculator/ Why You Shouldn't Bother Creating a Mobile App By Jean-Baptiste Coge. "Lessons learned spending one year creating and improving our mobile app..." https://medium.com/inside-birdly/why-you-shouldn-t-bother-creating-a-mobile-app-328af62fe0e5 +10: NAVIGATION. 'Learn More' Links - You Can Do Better By Katie Sherwin. The phrase 'Learn More' is increasingly used as a crutch for link labels. But the text has poor information scent and is bad for accessibility. With a little effort, transform this filler copy into descriptive labels that help users confidently predict what the next page will be. http://www.nngroup.com/articles/learn-more-links/ Plain Language: Use Descriptive and Meaningful Text in Your Links By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "Have you ever visited a website, selected a link, only to discover the page you were taken to wasn't what you expected?..." https://www.lireo.com/use-descriptive-meaningful-text-links/ Mobile Navigation Design Fundamentals By Craig Dehner. "There are many different ways to structure navigation when building a mobile app. Each structure has its advantages and disadvantages..." http://thekineticui.com/mobile-navigation-design-fundamentals/ +11: TOOLS. Colour Contrast Determinator By Vision Australia. "We've developed a new online tool to help you find colour combinations that have sufficient contrast..." http://www.visionaustralia.org/digital-access-determinator +12: USABILITY. Cognitive Psychology for UX - The Principle of Least Effort By Spencer Lanoue. "...Even though we have intricate minds, we don't want to think too hard-or too much-if we don't have to..." https://www.usertesting.com/blog/2015/12/09/principle-of-least-effort/ How to Create Successful Mobile Experiences By Alex Asianov. "Designing a mobile app requires empathy. The features you invent must be business solutions that have a cost and a benefit to your business and to the user..." https://uxmag.com/articles/how-to-create-successful-mobile-experiences +13: XML. Does SVG Text Pass WCAG 1.4.5 (Images of Text)? By Leonie Watson. "A recent question prompted me to ask whether the SVG element would pass WCAG 2.0 1.4.5 (images of text)..." https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2015/12/does-svg-text-pass-wcag-1-4-5-images-of-text/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +14: 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.]