+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 14, Issue 52, June 23, 2016. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 51 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: COLOR. 04: DRUPAL. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: HTML5. 08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 09: JAVASCRIPT. 10: MISCELLANEOUS. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. I Didn't Care about Accessibility. Now I'll start. By Lasse Diercks. "Accessibility is not a feature, it's a requirement..." https://medium.com/@lassediercks/how-can-we-approach-accessibilty-42cfc24d9d81 1.2.4 Captions (Live) By Rakesh Paladugula. "Captions are provided for all live audio content in synchronized media. (Level AA) Intention of 1.2.4 Captions (Live) Captions are text versions of the audio content, synchronized with the video." http://www.maxability.co.in/2016/06/1-2-4-captions-live/ Accessibility as Performance By Estelle Weyl. "...even if your site does load quickly but is not accessible, it will result in your visitors being unhappy, potentially losing them as potential customer for life..." https://www.instartlogic.com/blog/accessibility-performance Accessibility Factsheets By AccessibilityOz. "The factsheets provide detailed information on accessibility issues, impact on the end user together with a detailed checklist or test plan that can be used by content managers or developers to review website content and functionality and guidance on the use of automated testing tools. They can be read online, downloaded and printed by following these category links." https://www.accessibilityoz.com/factsheets/ How to Make Websites User Friendly and Accessible for Everybody By Ruth Mendez. "...In order to make a website accessible to a wide audience, the design must be done in a way that makes it readable and usable to anyone..." https://hostingfacts.com/website-accessibility-guide/ Accessibility is Everyone's Job: a Role-Based Model for Teams By Mark Palmer. "In this post, Mark helps us unpack how each role can contribute to making something that works for everyone..." http://simplyaccessible.com/article/role-based-a11y/ Forbin Report: WCAG 2.0 FAQs (Video) By VGM Forbin. "Christina Throndson and Rob Duryea address business owners' most frequently asked questions about the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines enforced by the Department of Justice as they pertain to privately-held companies in healthcare, financial and more." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_PoqFrPHJ0 Two Months Later: Audio Players Still Have No Volume Control By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "...Sadly, nothing has changed in the past two months..." https://www.lireo.com/two-months-later-audio-players-still-have-no-volume-control/ E*Trade Digital Accessibility Settlement Agreement By The Office of Lainey Feingold. "...This is a settlement agreement between E*Trade and two blind customers. The agreement is about E*Trade's website, mobile applications and online trading platform. E*Trade has agreed to make these services accessible and usable for disabled customers. This agreement was reached in Structured Negotiation. No lawsuit was needed. Lainey Feingold and Linda Dardarian are the lawyers who worked with the bank on this effort. The blind customers are Victor Tsaran and Pratik Patel." www.lflegal.com/2016/06/etrade-agreement/ Settlement Agreement Between the United States of America and the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin By ada.com "...all existing web content and online services for conformance with, at minimum, WCAG 2.0 AA, by: (1) performing automated accessibility tests of its website and all online services, using an automated tool approved by the United States, to identify any accessibility barriers; and (2) enlisting individuals with different disabilities, including at a minimum individuals who are blind, deaf, and have physical disabilities (such as those limiting the ability to use a mouse), to test its pages for ease of use and accessibility barriers..." https://www.ada.gov/milwaukee_pca/milwaukee_sa.html +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Generated Content Module Level 3 (Accessibility Section) W3C Working Draft, 2 June 2016 Editors: Elika J. Etemad and Dave Cramer. "...Content intended for visual media sometimes needs alternative text for speech output. The 'content' property thus accepts alternative text to be specified after a slash ('/') after the last . If such alternative text is provided, it must be used for speech output instead..." https://www.w3.org/TR/css-content-3/#accessibility Leveling Up in CSS By Jonathan Z. White. "...There are four things you can do to stay sane while using CSS at scale: use proper semantics, modularize, adopt a naming convention, and follow the single responsibility principle...You should be able to read HTML and CSS like a book. It should tell a story. A story has characters and relationships between them. More semantic CSS will ultimately make your code more maintainable..." https://medium.freecodecamp.com/leveling-up-css-44b5045a2667#.jlnppxhvd Thinking about Page Floats, Figures, Regions and Grids By Rachel Andrew. "A few days ago my friend Jen Simmons pointed me to some images demonstrating the goals of the CSS Figures specification, asking if this could be built using Grid..." https://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2016/06/17/thinking-about-page-floats-figures-regions-and-grids/ +03: COLOR. In Plain Sight: Text, Contrast, and Accessibility By Ryan Frederick. "Contrast is one of the basic elements of graphic design. It lets us tell things apart. Yet in UI design, at least for the web, there is a perpetual temptation to skimp. Things tend towards gray-on-gray." https://medium.com/shopify-ux/in-plain-sight-5639c9afb4c6 Colour Contrast - Why Does it Matter? By Richard Morton. "Colour contrast between text and background is important on web pages. It affects some people's ability to perceive the information (in other words to be able to receive the information visually)...." https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/06/17/colour-contrast-why-does-it-matter/ Improving UX For Color-Blind Users By Adam Silver. "...In this article I provide 13 tips to improve the experience for color-blind people - something which can often benefit people with normal vision too..." https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2016/06/improving-ux-for-color-blind-users/ +04: DRUPAL. Building an Accessibility Toolbar with Drupal By Michelle Williamson. "In November 2015, a team from Mediacurrent participated in Knowbility's accessibility hackathon. One of the features we created for the site was an accessibility toolbar. We were able to increase the accessibility of the site immensely with relatively little effort with this small addition..." https://www.mediacurrent.com/blog/accessibility-toolbar +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. Setting Standards for Usability Testing By Danny and Patricia Franzreb. "Many practical user experience projects rely on very loose processes, which are not explicitly defined. That might be ok for an informal usability test, but we should have a more reliable approach for larger UX projects. Just imagine how people would react if the automotive industry created cars without having repeatable and robust standards within the industry as a whole! Our digital experiences deserve just as much attention..." http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/setting-standards-for-usability-testing/ Why 5 is the Magic Number for UX Usability Testing By Ellie Martin. "Given that the probability of a user encountering an error during testing is 31%, according to Jeff Sauro of MeasuringU, testing just 5 users would turn up 85% of the problems in an interface...31% binomial probability shows that once you add more than 5 users to a test group, returns diminish drastically-the more users you add to a test group, the less you'll learn." http://blog.invisionapp.com/ux-usability-research-testing/ +06: EVENTS. Web Accessibility 6 Week Course Online https://www.udacity.com/course/web-accessibility--ud891 Web Accessibility: What Do You Need to Know? June 29, 2016. Mountain View, California, U.S.A. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/web-accessibility-what-do-you-need-to-know-tickets-26091427161 Oklahoma ABLE Tech 2016 Technology Accessibility OK Conference September 8, 2016. Norman, Oklahoma, U.S.A. https://www.ok.gov/abletech/IT_Accessibility/2016_Conference.html New York City UX Conference September 10-16, 2016. New York, New York, U.S.A. https://www.nngroup.com/training/new-york-city/ From The Front September 15-16, 2016. Bologna, Italy http://2016.fromthefront.it/ Mobility and Modern Web Conference September 14-16, 2016. Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. https://mmwcon.org/ NCDevCon 2016 September 17-18, 2016. Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. http://ncdevcon.com/ Accessibility Camp Bay Area October 29, 2016. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://www.accessibilitycampbay.org/ +07: HTML5. HTML 5.1 Editors: Steve Faulkner, Arron Eicholz, Travis Leithead, and Alex Danilo. "This specification defines the 5th major version, first minor revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features continue to be introduced to help Web application authors, new elements continue to be introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention continues to be given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability...." https://www.w3.org/TR/html51/ Using the Title Attribute to Help Users Predict Where They Are Going By Jakob Nielsen. "The link title attribute can be used to provide additional details for mouse users, but should not be relied on as a main source of information scent." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/title-attribute/ +08: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Card Sorting a Kitchen Taxonomy By Grace G. Lau. "...Part 4 of 'Taxonomy of Spices and Pantries' looks at how card sorting studies can inform a taxonomy..." http://boxesandarrows.com/card-sorting-a-kitchen-taxonomy/ +09: JAVASCRIPT. Building Better Accessibility Primitives By Rob Dodson. "As the sites we build increasingly become more app-like it's important that the platform keep up and give component authors the tools they need to build rich accessible experiences..." https://robdodson.me/building-better-accessibility-primitives/ A Gentle Explanation of the 'this' Keyword By Dmitri Pavlutin. "A lot of time this keyword was a mystery for me and many starting JavaScript developers. It is a powerful feature, but requires some efforts to be understood..." http://rainsoft.io/gentle-explanation-of-this-in-javascript/ The Future of the Web By Matt Griffin. "Is the web's way forward to be defined by a bunch of renegade mavericks armed with Flash or JavaScript? Matt Griffin argues that it may not be so bad to let web authors kludge together the things they'd like to build, and follow where their mistakes lead us." http://alistapart.com/article/the-future-of-the-web +10: MISCELLANEOUS. Help One of Our Own: Carolyn Wood By A List Apart Staff. "Selfless editor and colleague Carolyn Wood has run into a medical emergency and needs the community's help. Over the years, she has given us immense gifts without ever asking for anything in return. Let's pull together and give back." http://alistapart.com/article/help-one-of-our-own-carolyn-wood +11: TOOLS. Auditing Your Apps for Accessibility (Video) By Adobe. "Making your app accessible helps you reach all of your potential users. Get introduced to the new Accessibility Inspector and learn how it streamlines finding and fixing accessibility issues across all Apple platforms. Go beyond the basics with our experts as they guide you through the process of optimizing accessibility for your app..." https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/407/ +12: USABILITY. We Reward the Wrong Things By Adrian Roselli. "As an industry, in general we praise sites that look good, maybe with nifty animations, cool hover effects, and the mythical 60fps golden standard..." http://adrianroselli.com/2016/06/we-reward-the-wrong-things.html Time to Reclaim the Brand By Gerry McGovern. "Branding has long been hijacked by the very worst forms of traditional marketing. Branding has often become visual design propaganda inventing a fiction that rarely has anything to do with the actual customer experience." http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/time-reclaim-brand 10 Reasons Why Placeholders are Problematic By Adam Silver. "...It pretty much comes down to the fact that the valuable information put in placeholders is not always available. And what is worse, is when they are used as a replacement for labels. Here's why..." https://medium.com/simple-human/10-reasons-why-placeholders-are-problematic-f8079412b960 Prospect Theory and Loss Aversion: How Users Make Decisions By Aurora Bedford. "When choosing among several alternatives, people avoid losses, and optimize for sure wins because the pain of losing is greater than the satisfaction of an equivalent gain." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/prospect-theory/ [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.]