+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 15, Issue 42, April 13, 2017. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 42 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: HTML5. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Accessibility Compliance in Higher Education By Eric Grzymkowski. "...In January 2017, the federal government adopted Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0) Levels of A and AA standards for all its websites. This sets a precedent going forward that will likely be adopted by the Department of Justice. In short, if your higher education site conforms to WCAG 2.0 best practices, it's very likely you'll be in the clear..." https://www.oho.com/blog/accessibility-compliance-higher-education Accessibility Focus: 5 Common Mistakes You Should Avoid By Julia Currie. "...Julia, one of our Accessibility Specialists, takes a look at five common accessibility mistakes we see here at Zoonou. Hopefully identifying them here will help you to avoid them in the future..." http://www.zoonou.com/blog/accessibility-focus-common-mistakes The Challenges Web Designers Face in Ensuring Website Accessibility By Eric Karkovack. "Over the past several years, accessibility has become one of most-discussed topics in web design..." https://speckyboy.com/web-design-challenges-accessibility/ What is an Accessible Name? By Léonie Watson. "Many HTML elements have an accessible name. It can be derived from different sources, and browsers use an algorithm called the Accessible Name and Description Computation to figure it out..." https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2017/04/what-is-an-accessible-name/ UW Highlights Ph.D. Candidate's Work on Touchscreen Accessibility By University of Washington. "Today's touchscreen world threatens to leave behind a lot of people with motor impairments, but iSchool Ph.D. candidate Martez Mott is working to change that with Smart Touch..." https://ischool.uw.edu/news/2017/04/uw-highlights-phd-candidates-work-touchscreen-accessibility How to Avoid Losing One Million Website Customers with Inclusive Digital Design By Claudia Cahalane. "In our recent webinar Dementia and Inclusive Digital Design, we shared examples of how the BBC, NHS and other organisations and companies are catering for an ageing audience by using thoughtful web design..." https://abilitynet.org.uk/news-blogs/how-avoid-losing-one-million-website-customers-inclusive-digital-design EME and Accessibility By Philippe Le Hégaret, Judy Brewer. "During an Advisory Committee review of the Encrypted Media Extensions (aka EME) specification, concerns were raised regarding potential accessibility for people with disabilities..." https://www.w3.org/2017/03/eme-accessibility.html An Introduction to Audio Description in Higher Education Video Content By Penn State. "This document summarizes information gathered by a research team at Penn State. The team investigated various services and techniques related to audio description for the vision impaired." http://accessibility.psu.edu/video/audiodescription/adwhitepaper/ What Did WCAG 2.0 Do for People with Low Vision and Cognitive Disabilities? By David MacDonald. "WCAG did as much as any standard could possibly do in 2008..." http://www.davidmacd.com/blog/wcag-for-low-vision-cognitive-disabilites.html Drive-By Demand Letters and Lawsuit Threats Do Not Help Advance Accessibility By Karl Groves. "Over the last 18 months, a handful of law firms in the United States have been sending out demand letters to website owners threatening to sue over web accessibility..." http://www.karlgroves.com/2017/04/07/drive-by-demand-letters-and-lawsuit-threats-do-not-help-advance-accessibility/ Florida Courts Rule ADA Covers Websites With Nexus To Physical Store By Minh Vu. "Two Florida federal district court judges require websites to have a 'nexus' to a physical location for coverage under Title III of the ADA, but a third judge requires more..." http://www.adatitleiii.com/2017/04/florida-courts-rule-ada-covers-websites-with-nexus-to-physical-store/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. PX, EM or REM Media Queries? By Zell Liew. "Have you wondered if you should use px, em or rem for media queries..." https://zellwk.com/blog/media-query-units/ Units for Media Queries - Different Conclusion By Alastair Campbell. "This is a reply to a post on zellwk.com concluding that 'So.. I'm sorry to break your bubble, pixel fans, but it's a no-go for pixel based queries'..." https://alastairc.ac/2017/04/px-em-or-rem-media-queries-different-conclusion/ Grid-Powered Drop Quotes, Revisited By Eric A. Meyer. "In last week's Grid-Powered Drop Quotes, I overlooked a potential problem with the styles I created. Fortunately, Philippe Wittenbergh caught it and pointed it out, and we both hit on the same solution..." http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2017/04/10/grid-drop-quotes-revisited/ Let's Define Exactly What Atomic CSS is By John Polacek. "As Atomic CSS (also known as Functional CSS) has been gaining in popularity, some confusion has occurred about similar related terms. The goal of this article is to clarify this terminology..." https://css-tricks.com/lets-define-exactly-atomic-css/ Refer to the Spec By Rachel Andrew. "As people have started to work with CSS Grid Layout I've been getting more questions..." https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2017/04/11/refer-to-the-spec/ +03: COLOR. Reproduction of Color Images for Monochromats and Dichromats (PDF) By Karl Rasche, Robert Geist, and James Westall. "Authors producing documents with color images for any venue must account for the possibility that the color images might be reduced to gray scale before they are viewed." https://people.cs.clemson.edu/%7Egeist/recent_papers/g3geis.pdf +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Write Better Qualitative Usability Tasks: Top 10 Mistakes to Avoid By Amy Schade. "Writing good tasks for a usability study is an art, not a science, but there are still rules. Examine your tasks for these 10 common task-writing mistakes." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/better-usability-tasks/ WCAG Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) By Shadi Abou-Zahra. "Today W3C published a First Public Working Draft of the Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Rules Format 1.0 specification..." https://www.w3.org/blog/2017/04/wcag-accessibility-conformance-testing-act/ Practical Usability Ratings by Experts (PURE) By Jeff Sauro. "There's a continued need to measure and improve the user experience..." https://measuringu.com/pure/ +05: EVENTS. aXe-Core Live Tutorial April 27, 2017. Online. https://www.deque.com/blog/join-axe-core-live-tutorial/ Midwest JS August 16-18, 2017. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. http://midwestjs.com/ UX Week August 29-September 1, 2017. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. http://uxweek.com/ BigDesign September 14-16, 2017. Addison, Texas, U.S.A. http://bigdesignevents.com/conference/ Fluxible September 18-24, 2017. Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada http://www.fluxible.ca/ +06: HTML5. On Hiding Content (Hat Tip to Jennifer Sutton) By Hidde de Vries. "Sometimes you want parts of your page to be invisible. For example, because all of your application is on a single page..." https://hiddedevries.nl/en/blog/2017-04-11-on-hiding-content +07: JAVASCRIPT. ARIA Alert Support By Steve Faulkner. "...Support has improved considerably since the last round of tests in 2012..." https://www.paciellogroup.com/blog/2017/04/aria-alert-support/ Accessible Hide/Show (Collapsible Regions) Using ARIA By Nicolas Hoffmann. "This script will transform a simple list of Hx/contents into shiny and accessible hide/show - collapsible regions - using ARIA..." https://van11y.net/accessible-hide-show/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Jeremy Keith at Render 2017 - YouTube By Jeremy Keith. "Here's the opening keynote I gave at the Render Conference in Oxford. The talk is called Evaluating Technology..." https://adactio.com/links/12140 +09: NAVIGATION. The Links vs. Buttons Showdown (Sides) By Marcy Sutton. "Tonight! In a battle as old as the Internet, we'll pit two HTML elements against each other in a crusade of better and worse, right and possibly wrong. One element is triggered with the Space bar; the other, with the Enter key. Who will win in this all-out free-for-all between LINKS vs BUTTONS?" https://speakerdeck.com/marcysutton/the-links-vs-buttons-showdown +10: USABILITY. 7 Tips for Presenting Bulleted Lists in Digital Content By Hoa Loranger. "Bullet points help break up large blocks of text, make complex articles and blog posts easier to grasp, and make key information stand out." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/presenting-bulleted-lists/ [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.]