+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 16, Issue 10, August 31, 2017.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. 

++ISSUE 10 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: DRUPAL.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: HTML.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.
10: TOOLS.
11: TYPOGRAPHY.
12: USABILITY.

SECTION TWO: 
13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

What's New in WCAG 2.1
By Adrian Roselli.
"…Everything below is pulled from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, W3C Working Draft dated 16 August 2017, but if you are reading this well after that date and don't care so much, just visit the latest release instead…"
http://adrianroselli.com/2017/08/whats-new-in-wcag-2-1.html

Inclusive Design - An Evening with Derek Featherstone (Video)
By Derek Featherstone.
"This presentation will touch on aspects of design that considers everyone. Then we'll open it up for an engaging Q&A session (bordering a roundtable discussion) on inclusive design and how it can be baked into our daily workflows…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh-mWhxV77k

Tooltips and Toggletips 
By Heydon Pickering.
"…In this article, I'll be looking at situations which might call for a tooltip or else a toggletip, and formulating inclusive implementations for each…"
https://inclusive-components.design/tooltips-toggletips/

Auto-Captions vs. Editing Auto-Captions vs. Re-Captioning in Post-Production
By Patrick Loftus.
"…for organizations that want to both accommodate the needs of those who watch video without sound and those who cannot hear, it is in their best interests to seek the most efficient and scalable captioning solution that works for their purposes. Whether it's in-house, through a third-party service, or a combination of both, what matters most is that your process produces captions that are accurate and high-quality."
http://www.3playmedia.com/2017/08/25/recaptioning-vs-editing-live-captions-and-autocaptions/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Screen Readers and CSS: Are We Going Out of Style (and into Content)?
By John Northup.
"Developers often ask how various CSS declarations translate to the screen reader experience…"
http://webaim.org/blog/screen-readers-and-css/

Problem Space
By Jeremey Keith.
"…I very much appreciate the efforts that people have put into coming up with great naming systems and methodologies, even the ones I don't necessarily agree with. They're all aiming to make that overlap of HTML and CSS less painful. But the really hard problem is where people overlap."
https://adactio.com/journal/12759


+03: DRUPAL.

Accessibility Issues in Drupal + What You Can Do to Fix Them (Video)
By Damien McKenna.
"Last month we talked about what the accessibility issues are in Drupal core...this month our speaker Damien McKenna will talk about the next steps in resolving these issues…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqDFJedf1pI


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Order Effects in Usability Questionnaires
By Stephanie B. Linek.
"…The presented empirical study investigated order effects for the arrangement of the usability evaluation of the components of a website…"
http://uxpajournal.org/order-effects-usability-questionnaires/

Revisiting the Factor Structure of the System Usability Scale
By James (Jim) R. Lewis and Jeff Sauro.
"…Because a distinction based on item tone is of little practical or theoretical interest, we recommend that user experience practitioners and researchers treat the SUS as a unidimensional measure of perceived usability, and no longer routinely compute Usability and Learnability subscales…"
http://uxpajournal.org/revisit-factor-structure-system-usability-scale/

Usability Testing of Spoken Conversational Systems
By Susan L. Hura.
"…The purpose of this editorial is to share practical experience, introduce concerns particular to speech, and point out potential issues…"
http://uxpajournal.org/usability-spoken-systems/

When to Provide Assistance in a Usability Test
By Jeff Sauro.
"…Here are ten things to consider when deciding when an assist is warranted in a usability test…"
https://measuringu.com/usability-assistance/

Vanity Metrics Need to Die
By Kristina Bjoran.
"…Let's all do ourselves a favor: fight the good fight against vanity. Fight for truth in data."
http://www.uxbooth.com/articles/vanity-metrics-need-to-die/

Build-Low-Cost-User-Research-Lab
By Bernard Tyers.
"This is a short guide to our approach to build a low-cost user research studio…"
https://ei8fdb.github.io/Build-Low-Cost-User-Research-Lab/


+05: EVENTS.

Buffalo Accessibility Meetup
September 20, 2017.
Buffalo, New York, U.S.A. 
https://www.meetup.com/buffa11y/events/242406691

Accessibility Scotland
September 22, 2017.
Edinburgh, Scotland
http://accessibility.scot/

Revised Section 508 Chapter 5 Software (including Mobile)
September 26, 2017
Online.
https://www.accessibilityonline.org/cioc-508/session/?id=110615

International Day of People with Disability
December 3, 2017. 	
Everywhere
http://www.idpwd.com.au/

Digital Summit Dallas
December 5-6, 2017.
Dallas, Texas, U.S.A.
http://dallas.digitalsummit.com/


+06: HTML.

Mapping in HTML - a Proposal for a New Element
By Terence Eden.
"This is a sketch of a proposal for a new HTML element to simplify displaying maps on a website. I'd like your comments and criticisms before I submit it…"
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2017/08/mapping-in-html-a-proposal-for-a-new-element/

Firefox 57 Will be Less Chatty to Screen Readers in Some Situations
By Marco Zehe.
"Over the last few days, I landed two changes to Firefox which change how we expose implicit landmarks of some HTML5 elements. This is to make screen readers a bit less chatty in certain situations. For many years, Firefox has exposed certain new HTML5 elements like <header>, <footer>, <nav>, <main>, or <aside> with their corresponding WAI-ARIA landmark semantics…"
https://www.marcozehe.de/2017/08/30/firefox-57-will-less-chatty-screen-readers-situations/


+07: JAVASCRIPT.

On Demand Live Regions
By Heydon Pickering.
"A tiny module for making screen readers announce text on demand, without a visual change to the interface…"
https://github.com/Heydon/on-demand-live-region

JavaScript Scope and Closures
By Zell Liew.
"…Here's an explanation of scopes and closures to help you understand what they are…"
https://css-tricks.com/javascript-scope-closures/


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Software Development 450 Words Per Minute
By Tuukka Ojala.
"'Something's a little bit off here.' That's what I predict your first thought to be upon seeing my cubicle for the first time. There's no screen or mouse in sight. Instead there's a guy hammering away on a keyboard, staring at seemingly nothing…"
https://www.vincit.fi/en/blog/software-development-450-words-per-minute/


+09: NAVIGATION.

Back-to-Top Button Design Guidelines
By Hoa Loranger.
"9 UX guidelines for Back to Top links which help users navigate to the top of long pages. Depending on users' needs, other techniques may be more appropriate on some sites…"
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/back-to-top/

How to Return to the Top of a Web Page
By Deborah Edwards-Onoro.
"While I was reading today's Nielsen Norman Group's article on back-to-top links design guidelines, it confirmed something I noticed when I recently conducted usability testing…"
https://www.lireo.com/how-to-return-to-the-top-of-a-web-page/


+10: TOOLS.

AccessLint
By AccessLint.
AccessLint is a GitHub App that finds accessibility issues in your pull requests…" 
https://www.accesslint.com/


+11: TYPOGRAPHY.

Improve Web Typography with CSS Font Size Adjust
By Gajendar Singh.
"The font-size-adjust property in CSS allows developers to specify the font-size based on the height of lowercase letters instead of uppercase letters. This can significantly improve the legibility of text on the web…"
https://www.sitepoint.com/improve-web-typography-css-font-size-adjust/

User Interfaces for Variable Fonts
By Andrew Johnson.
"The tools we design with have a unique effect on the way we work, constraining and empowering us while we explore, examine and create. Variable fonts give us a new, wide open typographic space with which to work. Instead of prescribing value to individual UI elements in a vacuum, we should take a hybrid and calculated approach to variable font interfaces. How do we structure our design tools to adapt to the new advantages variable fonts provide us with?"
https://alistapart.com/article/user-interfaces-for-variable-fonts


+12: USABILITY.

The Sad Story of a Lonely Piece of Content
By Gerry McGovern.
"…we all have to work together. Content and code. Break down these stupid silos and barriers that humans are always putting up. The content and the code in harmony and indivisible. No more barriers or borders so that we can create the seamless customer experience…"
http://gerrymcgovern.com/the-sad-story-of-a-lonely-piece-of-content/

7 Deadly UX Sins (and How to Avoid Them)
By Justinmind.
"UX fails that keep showing up: nasty UI navigation, destructive sign-up forms and page speeds from hell…"
https://uxplanet.org/7-deadly-ux-sins-and-how-to-avoid-them-f47292e1f5dd

Service Blueprints: Definition
By Sarah Gibbons.
"Service blueprints visualize organizational processes in order to optimize how a business delivers a user experience." 
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/service-blueprints-definition/

The State of UX According to Autocomplete
By Fabricio Teixeira.
"Believe it or not, the difference between UX and UI is still one of the most searched topics of all time…"
https://uxdesign.cc/the-state-of-ux-according-to-autocomplete-8f7f8613cc9c



[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:
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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:
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+ 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.]