+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 17, Issue 23, November 28, 2018. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 23 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: JAVASCRIPT. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: SITES AND BLOGS. 09: TOOLS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 11: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Short Note on Role None or Presentation? By Steve Faulkner. "…All modern browsers support both role="none" and role="presentation…" https://codepen.io/stevef/post/none-or-presentation Understanding SC 1.2.5 Audio Description (Prerecorded) By Raghavendra Satish Peri. "The intent of this success criterion is to provide audio descriptions to the videos so as to aid blind & visually impaired users understand the visual aspect of the video content…" https://www.digitala11y.com/understanding-sc-1-2-5-audio-description-prerecorded/ Toggling Animations On and Off By Kirupa Chinnathambi. "…In this article, we are going to try to make everyone happy independent of what their views on animations might be. We are going to give our users full control over whether they want to see animations or not, and we are going to do that by employing a few cool technical tricks…" https://www.kirupa.com/html5/toggling_animations_on_off.htm Accessibility = Innovation By Mischa Andrews. 'Innovation' is often used as an excuse for avoiding accessibility. Let's pivot these conversations to get more people excited about accessibility and an awesome future. https://medium.com/@MischaAndrews/accessibility-innovation-20912107fc4e First Website Accessibility Agreement Reached With WCAG 2.1 As Its Standard By Lainey Feingold. "On November 2, 2018 Alameda County California, three blind residents, and the National Federation of the Blind announced a settlement designed to protect the rights of blind voters to participate fully in the county's voting program." https://www.lflegal.com/2018/11/alameda-voting/ Fear is a Poor Motivator for Accessibility By Lainey Feingold. "This is a post about what happens when organizations work on accessibility only because they are afraid of being sued. Six years ago Jared Smith wrote about bad motivators for access. He wrote that the best motivators are to reward, enlighten, and inspire. The worst motivators are guilt and punishment. Today in the United States the fear of lawsuits is driving too many access efforts. Lawsuits can be important tools to protect rights. But they can also be used for the wrong reasons. Those lawsuits can hurt disabled people needing to use the law when the lack of access creates true barriers to technology and information." https://www.lflegal.com/2018/11/webaim-fear/ Silver Update (Presentation) By Silver Task Force, W3C Accessibility Guidlines Working Group. Slide Presentation on proposed goals, milestones, timeline, prototypes and more for the next major revision of WCAG (code name 'Silver'). https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1V_nYD27N6kx8gRha0rrdQK8aKyvg7kKXu6rs44We7IU/ Trump Team Reverses Controversial Changes to Handling of Civil Rights Probes By Alyson Klein. "U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos' office for civil rights is reversing itself on several key changes to how it investigates civil rights claims that had infuriated the civil rights community…" https://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2018/11/trump-devos-civil-rights-changes-manual-special-education-complaints.html Schools, Colleges Targeted for Websites' Alleged Inaccessibility to the Blind By Scott O'Connell. "The College of the Holy Cross became the latest local educational institution to be targeted for allegedly failing to make its website accessible to handicapped users last week when a New York man sued the school in federal court…" https://www.telegram.com/news/20181122/schools-colleges-targeted-for-websites-alleged-inaccessibility-to-blind +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Exclusions Will Hopefully Be Like More Powerful Grid-Friendly Floats By Chris Coyier. "Exclusions (which are currently in a 'working draft' spec as I write) are kinda like float in that they allow inline content to wrap around an element. But not exactly a float…" https://css-tricks.com/exclusions-will-hopefully-be-like-more-powerful-grid-friendly-floats/ CSS Logical Properties and Values By Chris David Mills, Rachel Andrew, et al. "CSS Logical Properties and Values is a module of CSS introducing logical properties and values that provide the ability to control layout through logical, rather than physical, direction and dimension mappings…" https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_Logical_Properties How to Organize Your CSS with a Modular Architecture (OOCSS, BEM, SMACSS) By Claudio Mendonca. "…In this article, I'll show you how to organize your CSS architecture into HTML/CSS blocks that behave more like Lego blocks…" https://snipcart.com/blog/organize-css-modular-architecture How to Understand CSS Position Absolute Once and For All By Marina Ferreira. "Stop losing your elements on the screen by understanding how an object figures where it is supposed to sit…" https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-to-understand-css-position-absolute-once-and-for-all-b71ca10cd3fd +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Observe, Test, Iterate, and Learn (Video) By Don Norman. "There isn't a next time in product development, so Don Norman says that you must always study to keep up with the product cycle. " https://www.nngroup.com/videos/observe-test-iterate-and-learn-don-norman/ Prototypes and Production By Jeremy Keith. "…every so often, we use the materials of front-end development- HTML, CSS, and JavaScript - to produce something that isn't intended for production. I'm talking about prototyping…" https://adactio.com/journal/14562 Market Research vs User Research: How To Overcome Uncertainty By Dan Jecan. "…Market research mainly provides broad, quantitative insights about people's attitudes and their willingness to buy a product. This, in turn, informs marketing decisions…User research mainly provides deep, focused qualitative insights about people's behavior and how they would use a product. As a result, this informs design decisions…" https://uxstudioteam.com/ux-blog/market-research-vs-user-research/ +04: EVENTS. Accessibility and Compliance: How to Measure Digital Accessibility December 11, 2018. Online https://accessibility.deque.com/accessibility-and-compliance-how-to-measure-digital-accessibility Digital Accessibility: Lighting Talks & Holiday Social December 11, 2018. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/a11ychi/events/256749111/ Live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQbPiv0dAZk ConFoo Montreal March 13-15, 2019. Montreal, Canada https://confoo.ca/en/yul2019 DrupalCon Seattle April 8-12, 2019. Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. https://events.drupal.org/seattle2019 SmashingConf San Francisco April 16-17, 2019. San Francisco, Califorina, U.S.A. https://smashingconf.com/ +05: JAVASCRIPT. aria-rowspan Property By Rakesh Paladugula. "aria-rowspan property defines the number of rows a cell spanned within a table, grid or a treegrid…" https://www.maxability.co.in/2018/11/aria-rowspan-property/ You Might Not Need a Loop By Ire Aderinokun. "In JavaScript, like any other language, there are several ways to achieve the same result, some being more suited to certain situations than others. One of the first concepts I learned about when learning to code was loops, and it seemed like the answer to almost everything…" https://bitsofco.de/you-might-not-need-a-loop/ +06: MISCELLANEOUS. Front-End Development is Not a Problem to be Solved By Robin Rendle. "…HTML and CSS are often seen as a burden…What's behind this feeling? Well, designers want tools that let them draw pictures and export a batch of CSS and HTML files like Dreamweaver promised back in the day. On the other end, engineers don't want to sweat accessibility, web performance or focus states among many, many other things…We should see front-end development as a unique skillset that is critical to the success of any project…" https://css-tricks.com/front-end-development-is-not-a-problem-to-be-solved/ Should Designers Code By Jens Oliver Meiert. "…Although an understanding of adjacent fields is always useful, designers 'should,' in the normative, imperative sense of the word, not be able to develop. May-but not should." https://meiert.com/en/blog/should-designers-code/ No, We Don't Really Care About Your Privacy By Gerry McGovern. "…If only you weren't so innocent. If only you placed more value on your worth rather than on your convenience and getting free stuff. We value your information because from your information we make money. With your information we control you. You're our cash cow. How does it feel to be the product?" http://gerrymcgovern.com/no-we-dont-really-care-about-your-privacy/ +07: NAVIGATION. ARIA Landmarks Example By W3C ARIA Authoring Practices Task Force. "Visually outline the landmarks and/or headings on the page using the following buttons…" https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices/examples/landmarks/HTML5.html +08: SITES AND BLOGS. 24 Accessibility By The 24 Accessibility Team (Dennis Deacon, Carie Fisher, and Scott O'Hara). "24 Accessibility is a series of articles on all subjects related to digital accessibility. During the first 24 days in the month of December, we offer a daily dose of accessibility wisdom and insight from a wide array of knowledge experts throughout the world…" https://www.24a11y.com/ +09: TOOLS. Stylify Me By Annabelle Yoon and Michael Mrowetz. "…gain an overview of the style guide of a site, including colours, fonts, sizing and spacing. This tool allows the designer to research sites efficiently without the need to inspect each element, in order to be aware of current design trends and inform their own design decisions…" http://stylifyme.com/ +10: TYPOGRAPHY. Quick Test: Resize Text By Luis Garcia. "Resize text and make sure everything on the page works. Repeat until you get to 200% zoom. Seems simple? It is.…" https://a11yproject.com/posts/resize-text/ Variable Fonts and Wide-Screen Layouts: Adopting Data-Driven Progressive Enhancements By Kathryn Whitenton and Sarah Gibbons. "The NN/g website homepage now incorporates variable fonts and a wide-screen layout - 2 technical adjustments which improve the user experience for a subset of users on supported devices." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/variable-fonts-wide-screen-layout/ +11: USABILITY. Usability - What It Means and How to Get There By Meghan Horvath. "…Let's dive in, unearthing just how this sought-after concept is defined and shed light on how to achieve it for your product…" https://usabilla.com/blog/usability-what-it-means-how-to-get-there/ Making the Complex World Understandable Through Intuitive Design By Lauri Lukka. "…Great designs act as an interpreter. They make our complex world intuitive and understandable…" https://uxdesign.cc/taming-complexity-c44c0447dec5 The User Experience of Chatbots By Raluca Budiu. "Far from being 'intelligent', today's chatbots guide users through simple linear flows, and our user research shows that they have a hard time whenever users deviate from such flows." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/chatbots/ [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.]