+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 16, Issue 04, July 20, 2017. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 04 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: EVENTS. 04: JAVASCRIPT. 05: MISCELLANEOUS. 06: NAVIGATION. 07: TOOLS. 08: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 09: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. How to Make your Site Accessible for Screen Magnifiers (Hat tip to Jim Allan) By Daniel Göransson. "There are around ten times as many people who use screen magnifiers than screen readers. ..." https://axesslab.com/make-site-accessible-screen-magnifiers/ What I've Learned About Motor Impairment By James Williamson. "...I'd like to talk about designing for motor impairments, an aspect of accessibility that I think is often overlooked..." http://simpleprimate.com/blog/motor Empathy Prompts By Eric W. Bailey. "Ideas to help consider Inclusive Design principles when making things for others to use." https://empathyprompts.net/ On GitHub: https://github.com/ericwbailey/empathy-prompts#readme A Practical Starter Guide on Developing Accessible Websites By Cynthia Ng and Michael Schofield. "...few articles discuss web accessibility in more depth, and when they do, they are typically not specific to library web services. This article is meant to fill in this vacuum and will provide practical best practices and code..." http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/12697 Accessibility is Innovation By Jake Araullo. "Hardware and software accessiblity is simply this: facilitating information exchange as intended between a system and a person..." https://medium.com/safetyculture/accessibility-is-innovation-4961c652bbd5 Accessible Solutions By Adina Halter. "This is a collection of accessible solutions. The links take you to a page demonstrating the fully functional widget..." http://haltersweb.github.io/Accessibility/ Advancing Knowledge About Accessibility at the University of Arizona By Sofia Enamorado. "Dawn Hunziker is the IT Accessibility Consultant for the University of Arizona (UA). Through her fearless leadership, UA's IT Accessibility team has transformed the way the university as a whole approaches accessibility. ..." http://www.3playmedia.com/2017/07/17/qa-advancing-knowledge-accessibility-university-arizona/ OCR, DOJ Heads Clarify Plans to 'Reorient' Approach By Barley Snyder. "...Wheeler acknowledged the 'tremendous burden' placed on educational institutions in web accessibility mandates. He noted the new administration's push for a cost-benefit analysis in regulatory review could result in a movement away from the current standards imposed by the prior administration..." http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5a3ab1e9-a2f8-4d4f-a700-86cf47732008 Lawyers Cash in on Suits Demanding ADA-Compliant Web Sites (Hat tip to Jennifer Sutton) By Lisa Fickenscher. "Retailers across the country are getting slammed for operating Web sites that discriminate against the blind or visually impaired..." http://nypost.com/2017/07/11/lawyers-cash-in-on-suits-demanding-ada-compliant-web-sites/ Are You at Legal Risk... Because of Winn-Dixie? Q&A and Webinar Resources By Kristin Heineman. "Due to the number of thoughtful questions we received, we were unable to answer everything during the webinar, so we've provided additional answers below. For more information on this topic, you can access the webinar slides, transcript, and recorded presentation..." https://www.levelaccess.com/winn-dixie-qa The ADA, Websites and the Decision in Robles v. Dominos Pizza LLC By Baker McKenzie. "Are website operators required to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act? Yes, but..." http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=b04e07e6-efc0-47bb-9ac0-88c38f3b5f54 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Custom Properties, Media Queries, And Responsive Design By Steven Bradley. "One thing you can do with CSS custom properties that you can't do with variables in preprocessors is redefine them and assign new values inside @media queries. It's a useful ability to have and one more reason why you'd want to work with what are effectively native CSS variables..." http://vanseodesign.com/css/custom-properties-media-queries/ Refer to the Spec: Background and Motivation By Rachel Andrew. "...I am taking a look at the background and motivation section, which gives some examples of the sort of problems Grid aims to solve..." https://www.rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2017/07/19/refer-to-the-spec-background-and-motivation/ Methods to Organize CSS By Inessa Brown. "Developer Ben Frain once remarked that it's easy to write CSS code, but it is hard to scale and support it. This article describes the set of solutions out there to deal with this problem..." https://css-tricks.com/methods-organize-css/ Stop Using Resets: Visual Examples of the Practical Nonsense of Resets and Normalizers By Jens Oliver Meiert. "Reset style sheets, I've long had it with them: Resets, as well as normalizers, are quite practically useless..." https://meiert.com/en/blog/stop-using-resets/ What's Next for CSS? By Jonathan T. Neal. "CSS Database is a comprehensive list of CSS features and their positions in the process of becoming implemented web standards." https://jonathantneal.github.io/css-db/ Did CSS Get More Complicated Since the Late Nineties? By Hidde de Vries. "...Most of the early-day thinking about CSS still applies today (and is still very much there in more recent additions to CSS specs)..." https://hiddedevries.nl/en/blog/2017-07-03-did-css-get-more-complicated-since-the-late-nineties +03: EVENTS. MAX 2017 October 18-20, 2017. Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A. http://max.adobe.com/ Accessibility Camp - Bay Area October 21, 2017. San Francisco, Califorina, U.S.A. http://www.accessibilitycampbay.org/ International PHP Conference 2017 October 23-27, 2017 Munich, Germany https://phpconference.com/en/ +04: JAVASCRIPT. aria-current Design Patterns By Léonie Watson. The aria-current attribute indicates the element that represents the current item within a container or set of related elements. It is an enumerated type attribute that takes one of a number of predefined tokens ('page', 'step', 'location', 'date' or 'time'), or which may be set to 'true'..." http://design-patterns.tink.uk/aria-current/ +05: MISCELLANEOUS. Transcript: A Chat with Don Norman By Sarah Hawk. "...Last week we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to interview Don in a Google Hangout. Here is a full transcript of the session...He is here to chat with us about his seminal book on design - and our current book club focus - the book with the masochistic teapot cover, The Design of Everyday Things..." http://uxmastery.com/transcript-chat-don-norman/ Opquast Web Quality Checklist (Hat tip to Nicolas Hoffmann) By Opquast. https://www.opquast.com/opquast-web-quality-checklist/ Are You Wasting Money on Periodic Website Redesign? By Paul Boag. "Every few years organisations undertake yet another website redesign project. But is this the right approach or is there a better way?..." https://boagworld.com/digital-strategy/website-redesign/ +06: NAVIGATION. Mobile Subnavigation By Raluca Budiu. "Accordions, sequential menus, section menus and category landing pages are popular options for implementing mobile subnavigation." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mobile-subnavigation/ Why Mobile Menus Belong at the Bottom of the Screen By UX Movement. "...A bottom menu may look unusual compared to the more familiar top placement. But the latter ignores how the user's thumb functions on mobile devices. The thumb is the primary digit used to interact with mobile devices. This means thumb function should dictate menu form..." http://uxmovement.com/mobile/why-mobile-menus-belong-at-the-bottom-of-the-screen/ +07: TOOLS. Thimble By Mozilla. "Write the Web on the Web..." https://thimble.mozilla.org/en-US/ +08: USABILITY. Five User Requirements for Online Ads By Therese Fessenden. "Adhering to user expectations and usability heuristics will ensure advertising content is delivered seamlessly and that brand image holds integrity." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/user-requirements-online-ads/ UX Design Thinking From A Senior Citizen's Perspective By Emily Grace Adiseshiah. "...senior citizens are still an often untapped demographic in user experience design. If UX practitioners do not take senior citizen users into consideration, they are alienating an entire user base and removing them from the online experience: a no-win situation..." http://usabilitygeek.com/ux-design-thinking-senior-citizen-user/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +09: 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.]