+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 15, Issue 21, November 17, 2016. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 21 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: TOOLS. 09: USABILITY. 10: XML. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessibility and Me: Dealing with Dyslexia By gov.uk. "...In this latest post in our Accessibility and Me series, we speak to a case manager at HM Revenue & Customs who has dyslexia and uses voice-dictation software Dragon...I experience poor interaction with certain forms. Some are designed in a way that they're locked down so tight that Dragon can't interact with them..." https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2016/11/15/accessibility-and-me-dealing-with-dyslexia/ Listening to the Web, Part One: Thinking in Accessibility By Scott Vinkle. "Before we can boldly venture into the world of semantic HTML and screen readers, we must establish a solid foundation of thinking in accessibility..." http://simplyaccessible.com/article/listening-web-part-one-thinking-accessibility/ Web Accessibility: Essential for Some, Useful for All By University of Minnesota Duluth. "The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) has created a series of short videos. They show the impact of web accessibility for people with disabilities, and the advantages for everyone in a variety of situations..." https://itss.d.umn.edu/news/a11y-perspectives Deaf YouTubers Lead Movement to Put an End to Crappy Video Captions By Katie Dupere. "...Inadequate closed captioning is failing deaf and hard of hearing viewers around the world..." http://mashable.com/2016/11/11/youtube-closed-captioning-nomorecraptions How We're Striving to Make Buffer More Accessible and Why it Matters By Emily Plummer. "Have you ever had a moment that completely changed how you thought about the world around you?..." https://open.buffer.com/accessibility-at-buffer/ Retailers Should Start Preparing for Website Accessibility Class Actions: Careful, Your Website is Showing! By Kate S. Gold, Michael P. Daly, Bradley J. Andreozzi, and Alexis Burgess. "Retailers have been the predominant targets of a recent wave of demand letters claiming that their websites and mobile applications unlawfully discriminate against disabled customers..." http://www.natlawreview.com/article/retailers-should-start-preparing-website-accessibility-class-actions-careful-your Digital Accessibility in the New Political Reality By Lainey Feingold. "...I feel a new responsibility: to remind us all that digital accessibility is here to stay..." http://www.lflegal.com/2016/11/post-trump/ Section 508 and a new Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) By Jim Tobias. "...ITIC is working on 'VPAT 2.0' and has a draft version and a survey for responses; we encourage everyone to review the draft and complete the survey..." https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/section-508-new-voluntary-product-accessibility-template-jim-tobias VPAT 2.0: Towards Better Product Accessibility Evaluation and Reporting By Jim Tobias. "This document was drafted by group of public sector accessibility experts in hopes of developing a dialogue to improve the quality of Section 508 reporting and procurement processes..." http://inclusive.com/vpat20/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. The State of Responsive 3D Shapes By Ana Tudor. "As some people might know, I've always loved 3D geometry. Which has meant getting drawn towards playing with CSS 3D transforms in order to create various geometric shapes. I've built a huge collection of such demos, which you can check out on CodePen..." https://css-tricks.com/state-responsive-3d-shapes/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Triple Testing Your Survey By Leisa Reichelt. "Sending a survey is a convenient way to gather data quickly. But, it's very easy to inadvertently gather misleading and inaccurate data..." http://www.disambiguity.com/triple-test-survey/ How to Prioritize Usability Issues By Markus Pirker. "...Below I describe three different ways to ensure that you find and fix those issues with the biggest impact on the experience of your users..." https://userbrain.net/blog/how-to-prioritize-usability-issues Effective and Efficient: Conducting UX and Design Reviews By Kristin Zibell. "We have all been there-the umpteenth design review on a feedback loop that just will not end. The team is exhausted and creativity has been squeezed like water out of a dishrag. The stakeholders keep giving new feedback, often derailing previous feedback. The team wonders if it will ever be done. There is no clear path forward and the team has lost sight of the original goals, instead spending time on copy for one link or a particular shade of blue..." http://uxpamagazine.org/effective-and-efficient/ The Facilitation Spectrum: From Babysitter to Therapist By Jeff Sauro. "Facilitation is a valuable skill for collecting data from participants..." https://www.measuringu.com/blog/facilitation-styles.php +04: EVENTS. University of Illinois Web Conference April 5-7, 2017. Champaign, Illinois, U.S.A. http://webcon.illinois.edu/ Conversion Conference April 19-20, 2017. Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. http://www.conversionconference.com/ Lone Star PHP April 20-22, 2017. Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. http://lonestarphp.com/ +05: HTML5. The Elements of HTML By Steve Faulkner. "A list of HTML and XHTML elements, past and present..." http://w3c.github.io/elements-of-html/ 'Programmer Only' Web Languages are the First Step Towards Authoring Inaccessibility By Simon Harper. "Once upon a Time, All Authoring was straight forward..." https://medium.com/@sharpic/programmer-only-web-languages-are-the-first-step-towards-authoring-inaccessibility-eeebe157f70a +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Michigan World Usability Day 2016: Card Sorting to Improve Findability By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "In her Card Sorting to Improve Findability presentation, Carol Righi explained what card sorting is, how to conduct card sorting research, shared case studies, and provided practical tips for people organizing websites and applications. Here are my notes..." https://www.lireo.com/michigan-world-usability-day-2016-card-sorting-to-improve-findability/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. Progressive Web Apps: The definitive collection of resources By Bruce Lawson and Shwetank Dixit. "Want to get started with progressive web apps, but not sure where to start? This page will list the best resources we know of to help you understand Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), get started and learn things in depth..." https://dev.opera.com/articles/pwa-resources/ +08: TOOLS. Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool By Trace Center. "The Trace Center's Photosensitive Epilepsy Analysis Tool (PEAT) is a free, downloadable resource for developers to identify seizure risks in their web content and software..." http://trace.umd.edu/peat FormLinter By Thoughtbot. "...Enter a URL. FormLinter will find a form on the page and let you know if it can be improved..." https://formlinter.com/ Visual ARIA Update for ARIA 1.1 Sync By Bryan Garaventa. "The Visual ARIA Bookmarklet has been updated to include the most recent changes to ARIA 1.1, which includes some important feature enhancements that need to be explained..." https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/visual-aria-update-11-sync-bryan-garaventa +09: USABILITY. Dealing with (Ir)Responsibility for Accessibility in UX (Video) By David Sloan. "Effectively implementing accessible user experiences requires a shared responsibility for accessibility across and beyond a project team. When responsibility is not evenly distributed, and either accessibility is left to one or two individuals or not considered at all, the result all too often means the user experience for disabled people falls far short of what it could have been." https://vimeo.com/178452704 The Velvet Rope (Video) By Henny Swan. "...As the idea makers, the innovators, the artists and the thinkers, accessibility starts with you. In this talk I will share real stories from the types of people who are using your products and how you can make their everyday accessible..." http://2016.nuxconf.uk/speakers/henny-swan/ Designers Are Not Users (Video) By Jakob Nielsen. "Jakob Nielsen discusses the difference between UX team members and normal users." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZeXyVJC-Jg The Distribution of Users' Computer Skills: Worse Than You Think By Jakob Nielsen. "Across 33 rich countries, only 5% of the population has high computer-related abilities, and only a third of people can complete medium-complexity tasks." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/computer-skill-levels/ Progress Bars vs. Spinners: When to Use Which By UX Movement. "How would you feel if you asked someone at the store where an item was and they just stood there? You would probably get frustrated and move on. Users find themselves in this situation when same they see a spinner on their screen for a long time. http://uxmovement.com/navigation/progress-bars-vs-spinners-when-to-use-which/ 4 Big UX Optimization Steps By W Craig Tomlin. "...Step 1 - Define Personas. Step 2 - Conduct Behavioral Data Audit. Step 3 - Conduct UX and Usability Testing. Step 4 - Analyze Results and Make Optimization Recommendations..." http://www.usefulusability.com/4-big-ux-optimization-steps/ 4 Ways to Improve Usability and User Experience by Decluttering Designs By Paula Borowska. "Here are four tips for decluttering you designs..." https://designmodo.com/improve-usability-decluttering-designs/ Optimize for Return Visits, not Bounce Rate By Aurora Bedford. "Use bounce rate as a red flag for possible issues lurking on your site, but don't make design decisions aimed solely at chasing that second click. Optimize for long-term engagement through return visits and track deeper conversion goals." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/return-visits-not-bounce/ +10: XML. The SVG 2 Conundrum By Chris Coyier. "The SVG we know and love today is 'SVG 1.1 2nd edition'. SVG 2 is in Editor's Draft status at the W3C, and it's at serious risk of never getting past that, as it's charter may not be renewed before it reaches recommendation status..." https://css-tricks.com/svg-2-conundrum/ SVG Blend Modes With The feBlend Filter Primitive By Steven Bradley. "You've probably used an image editor to combine two images together using one of the different blend modes available in your editor of choice to create some very interesting images. Did you know SVG has a filter that lets you do the same thing?" http://vanseodesign.com/web-design/svg-filter-primitives-feblend/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: 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.]