+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 15, Issue 02, July 07, 2016. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 02 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: DREAMWEAVER. 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: HTML. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: NAVIGATION. 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. Why You Can't Discuss Online Learning Without Discussing Video Accessibility; But What's Really Required? By Justin Beck. "...The Harvard, MIT, and Netflix cases all make it clear that any public-facing materials must be properly captioned. This is no longer a nice-to-have: any campus that is not working on getting all of its public-facing materials captioned to ADA-508 compliance is sitting on a ticking time bomb. This isn't just a matter of academic materials, either: schools should be looking at their marketing materials, alumni relations, and campus news videos as well..." http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/video-accessibility-online/ Ways to Make a UI Accessible-Part I By Chris Pearce. "This follows on from my 'Let's Try Harder With Web Accessibility' article and will focus on practical tips you can apply in an effort to make your UI more accessible..." https://medium.com/fed-or-dead/ways-to-make-a-ui-accessible-part-i-84b5088acfb7 Responses To The Screen Reader Strategy Survey By Heydon Pickering. "In September of last year, I decided I wanted to hear stories about how screen reader users access The Web. I suspected, as a sighted web user, I made a lot of incorrect assumptions. Accordingly, I composed seven questions to find out about strategies for reading and operation..." https://medium.com/@Heydon/responses-to-the-screen-reader-strategy-survey-4356ef521715 Unlabelled Search Fields By Jeremy Keith. "Adam Silver is writing a book on forms-you may be familiar with his previous book on maintainable CSS. In a recent article (that for some reason isn't on his blog), he looks at markup patterns for search forms and advocates that we should always use a label. I agree. But for some reason, we keep getting handed designs that show unlabelled search forms..." https://adactio.com/journal/10910 The Tech Industry Is in Desperate Need of an Accessibility Upgrade By Cameron Glover. "Despite its universal appeal, tech still has a long way to go when it comes to properly including marginalized individuals into the creation and development process, as well as recognizing them as an important part of the user demographic." http://tech.co/tech-needs-accessibility-upgrade-2016-06 Feds Call Out Juneau Schools Website for Inaccessibility to People with Low Vision, Deafness By Quinton Chandler. "The federal government is cracking down on the Juneau School District because its website discriminates against people with disabilities..." http://www.alaskapublic.org/2016/07/05/feds-call-out-juneau-schools-website-for-inaccessibility-to-people-with-low-vision-deafness/ Michigan Woman Fights for Accessible Websites in U.S. School Districts By Lori Higgins. "School districts across the U.S., be warned: If your websites aren't accessible to people with disabilities, Marcie Lipsitt is ready to take action..." http://www.freep.com/story/news/education/2016/07/04/michigan-woman-fights-accessible-websites-us-school-districts/86526716/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Generated Content Initial Rewrite By Elika Etemad (fantasai). "New features include: leaders, cross-referenced counters, named strings, bookmark control, plus a handy new syntax for alternate text: content: url(sparkle.png) / "New!";" https://www.w3.org/blog/CSS/2016/06/24/css-content-fpwd/ An Introduction To Sass Data Types, Operators, and Functions By Steven Bradley. "I'm the last person to call myself a programmer, but I have learned the basics of a handful of programming languages over the years. One topic important to all of them is the different data types you can work with and how the language allows you to manipulate them." http://vanseodesign.com/css/sass-data-types-operators-functions/ +03: COLOR. Improving Color on the Web By Dean Jackson. "...Wide-gamut displays have arrived and are the future of computing devices. As your audience using these beautiful displays grows, you'll want to take advantage of the stunning range of colors on offer and provide users with a more engaging Web experience..." https://webkit.org/blog/6682/improving-color-on-the-web/ The Psychology of Color in Marketing and Branding By Gregory Ciotti. "The psychology of color as it relates to persuasion is one of the most interesting - and most controversial - aspects of marketing..." https://medium.com/swlh/the-psychology-of-color-in-marketing-and-branding-ebb2320a2b0 +04: DREAMWEAVER. Creating Accessible Web Content in Dreamweaver By WebAIM. "Dreamweaver is a popular web authoring tool developed by Adobe. It is often used as a WYSISYG (What you see is what you get) editor, meaning it allows people to create web pages without spending as much time in the markup or code. This tutorial outlines how to create accessible web content in Dreamweaver..." http://webaim.org/techniques/dreamweaver/ +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Two Questions We Answer With User Research By David Travis. "Fundamentally, all user research answers one of two questions: (a) Who are our users and what are they trying to do? (b) Can people use the thing we've designed to solve their problem? You answer the first question with a field visit and you answer the second question with a usability test." http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/the_two_questions_we_answer_with_user_research.html 5 Steps for Getting Started with Statistics for Research By Jeff Sauro. "Most participants at our UX Boot Camp go from little knowledge of statistics to running statistical comparisons in just three days. Here's the path we take participants on..." http://www.measuringu.com/blog/stats-started.php +06: EVENTS. Mobile Site Accessibility: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly July 26, 2016. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. http://www.meetup.com/a11ychi/events/232399635/ Accessibility Training October 11-12, 2016. Logan, Utah, U.S.A. http://webaim.org/training/ Giant October 17-19, 2016. Charlotte, North Carolina, U.S.A. http://www.giantconf.com/ CSS Dev Conference October 17-19, 2016. San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A. http://2016.cssdevconf.com/ World Usability Congress October 18-19, 2016. Graz, Austria http://www.worldusabilitycongress.com/ Interact London 2016 October 18-19, 2016. London, England, United Kingdom http://2016.interactconf.com/ Connect.JS October 20-22, 2016. Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. http://connect-js.com/ +07: HTML. HTML 5.2 (Editor's Draft) By Editors: Steve Faulkner, Arron Eicholz, Travis Leithead, Alex Danilo. "...This specification defines the 5th major version, second 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://w3c.github.io/html/ +08: JAVASCRIPT. A11y Support Series, Part 1: ARIA Tab Panel Accessibility By Paul J. Adam. "The following post is the first in Paul Adam's new blog post series, 'WAI-ARIA Widgets, Design Patterns, and Accessibility Support .' This series will outline how to build many of the different Custom Controls and Widgets defined in the WAI-ARIA 1.1 Specification from the W3C, and what screen readers they're compatible with." http://www.deque.com/blog/a11y-support-series-part-1-aria-tab-panel-accessibility/ JavaScript Design Patterns: The Singleton By Samier Saeed. "Among languages used in widespread production, JavaScript is by far the most quickly evolving, looking less like its earliest iterations and more like Python with every new spec put forth by ECMA International..." https://www.sitepoint.com/javascript-design-patterns-singleton/ +09: NAVIGATION. How Does Google 'Communicate'? By Gerry McGovern. "...Focus on the content that is integral to making the product or service itself easy to use. And do you know what that often means from a content point of view? Creating clear menus and links." http://gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/how-does-google-%E2%80%9Ccommunicate%E2%80%9D +09: USABILITY. The Evidence-Based UX Design Guide By Matt Isherwood. "Good UX design requires you know what your users are doing and thinking. You need to make decisions based on evidence not guesswork." http://mattish.com/evidence/ Why are Drop-Downs and Select Boxes Bad for Forms By Hazel Bolton. "Find out how drop-down menus and select boxes can hurt the user experience and in some cases make your form unusable...." http://www.formisimo.com/blog/why-are-drop-downs-and-select-boxes-bad-for-forms/ Brand Is Experience in the Digital Age By Kate Williamson. "While branding has been around since people began buying and trading goods, the definition has evolved in the Digital Age. Consumers now have a wider range of interaction with companies and greater choice in product selection. Today, brand is the holistic sum of customers' experiences, composed of visual, tonal and behavioral brand components, many of which are shaped by interaction design." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/brand-experience-ux/ +11: XML. Accessible SVGs By Heather Migliorisi. "Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) is emerging as the preferred graphic format to use on the web today. Are you abandoning the icon font or replacing old pg, gif and png graphics for the well-supported SVG, too? Let's see how this will impact users of assistive technology (AT) and what is needed in order to ensure a great user experience for everyone..." https://css-tricks.com/accessible-svgs/ [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.]