+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 17, Issue 37, March 6, 2019. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 37 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: HTML. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: TOOLS. 09: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Fighting Uphill By Eric Bailey. "…WebAIM's accessibility analysis of the top 1,000,000 homepages was released to the public on February 27, 2019. I've had a few days to process it, and frankly, it's left me feeling pretty depressed. In a sea of already demoralizing findings, probably most the notable thing is that pages containing ARIA-a specialized language intended to aid accessibility-are actually more likely to have accessibility issues. I don't think this is intentional malice on the part of authors, but it is worth saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions…" https://ericwbailey.design/writing/2019-03-05-fighting-uphill.html Moving Forward with Digital Accessibility in Higher Education (Video) By David Sloan. "Digital accessibility has become a significant concern across higher education, in part due to legal obligations, and also due to the opportunities that inclusive digital teaching and learning resources can offer students and staff with disabilities." http://www.sussex.ac.uk/tel/seminar/digitalaccessibility Semantics to Screen Readers By Melanie Richards. "…Melanie takes a deep dive into how our content is accessed by a wide array of screen readers, which are highly customizable to users. Understanding the nuances of accessibility APIs, thorough testing approaches, and the wealth of resources available, site creators can create the most widely accessible content for the most users possible." https://alistapart.com/article/semantics-to-screen-readers AI is Making CAPTCHA Increasingly Cruel For Disabled Users By Robin Christopherson. "…"improvements in AI means that a crisis is coming … and disabled people are suffering the most…" https://www.abilitynet.org.uk/news-blogs/ai-making-captcha-increasingly-cruel-disabled-users Do You Caption Your Videos? By Meryl K. Evans. "World Health Organization reports that more than 5 percent of the world's population is deaf or hard of hearing…" https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6503695378242682880 How User Provided Image Descriptions Have Failed to Make Twiter Accessible (PDF) By Cole Gleason et al. Our findings indicate that simply making it possible to provide image descriptions is not enough and reveal future directions for automated tools that may support users in writing high-quality descriptions…" https://www.colegleason.com/static/papers/TwitterImageDescriptions_WebConf2019.pdf 1.4.12 Text Spacing By Rakesh Paladugula. "…authors should ensure that the content is not cut-off or overlapped…" https://www.maxability.co.in/2019/03/1-4-12-text-spacing/ What is COGA? By Jennie Delisi. "Making Online Content Easier to Understand…" https://mn.gov/mnit/media/blog/?id=38-373446 The Business Case for Digital Accessibility By The Australian Network on Disability. "A new resource called The Business Case for Digital Accessibility explores key advantages of web accessibility to businesses of all types…" https://www.and.org.au/news.php/385/the-business-case-for-digital-accessibility Blind Employee Settles Lawsuit Against Miami-Dade County Public Schools By Raychel Lean. "Miami-Dade County Public Schools' websites and software weren't accessible to blind employee Janice A. Bartleson, but Miami disabilities attorrney Matthew Dietz helped negotiate a settlement agreement to change that…" https://www.law.com/dailybusinessreview/2019/02/27/miami-lawyer-settles-rare-website-accessibility-suit-with-miami-dade-public-schools/ Ninth Circuit Ruling Bolsters ADA Website Accessibility Suits By R. Andrew Arculin et al. "The Ninth Circuit's recent ruling in Robles v. Domino's Pizza, LLC provides yet another boon to plaintiffs across the country claiming that company websites may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) unless they make specific accommodations to consumers who have visual, auditory, or other disabilities…" https://www.venable.com/insights/publications/2019/03/ninth-circuit-ruling-bolsters-ada-website-access +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Responsive Spacing with viewport and ch Units By Chip Cullen. "…One of the more interesting things that I discovered was how easy it was to make spacing between elements act in a responsive way…" https://chipcullen.com/responsive-spacing-with-viewport-units/ Breaking Boxes With CSS Fragmentation By Rachel Andrew. "Rachel Andrew has been digging around in the CSS Fragmentation spec, and finding browser support is somewhat fragmented. In this article, she explains what fragmentation is, why you might want to use it, and what the state of browser support is." https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/02/css-fragmentation/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. How Diversity and Inclusion can Improve Testing By Callum Akehurst-Ryan. "As the testing pendulum has swung towards more engineering in recent years we're facing a new issue, the prevalence of an engineering mono-culture…" https://blog.scottlogic.com/2019/02/25/how-diversity-and-inclusion-can-improve-testing.html Repeat After Me: Preference Testing is Not A/B Testing By David Travis. "Researchers sometimes ask participants which of two alternative designs they prefer. The data from these studies comprise opinions that have little predictive value. In contrast, multivariate A/B testing involves target users doing real tasks. The data from these studies comprise behavioural observations that predict real-world behaviour." https://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/preference-testing-is-not-A-B-testing.html +04: EVENTS. 2019 State of Digital Accessibility Part 2 - Industry Drivers March 19, 2019. Online https://levelaccess.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_KTEDfxblSNaoMLyXxlzF7w GSuite for Education Accessibility Update April 1, 2019. Online https://educationonair.withgoogle.com/events/accessibility WebAIM Training May 7-8, 2019. Logan, Utah, U.S.A. https://webaim.org/training/ The Web Conference 2019 May 13-17, 2019. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. https://www2019.thewebconf.org/ John Slatin AccessU May 14-17, 2019. Austin, Texas, U.S.A. https://knowbility.org/programs/accessu/ Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) May 16, 2019. Everywhere http://globalaccessibilityawarenessday.org/ Stanford Drupal Camp May 17-18, 2019 Stanford, California, U.S.A. https://drupalcamp.stanford.edu/ Digital Accessibility ROI May 23, 2019. Online https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/content.asp?admin=y&contentid=559 DesignThinkers May 28-29, 2019. Vancouver, Canada https://www.designthinkers.com/Van +05: HTML. HTML Element Test File Index By Steve Faulkner. "I use 'em for testing…" https://thepaciellogroup.github.io/AT-browser-tests/ Having an Open dialog By Scott O'Hara. "…I'm just going to say right now that the dialog element and its polyfill are not suitable for use in production…temporarily putting aside what 'support' presently entails, how would someone implement the dialog element right now?…" https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2019/03/05/open-dialog.html +06: JAVASCRIPT. Accessibility is not a 'React Problem' By Leslie Cohn-Wein. "Every few months, it seems like there's a revival of the Twitter War™ about JavaScript libraries and accessibility. React is a common target, with developers naming a litany of issues…" https://www.netlify.com/blog/2019/02/25/accessibility-is-not-a-react-problem/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. W3C Approves WebAuthn as the Web Standard for Password-Free Logins By Emil Protalinski. "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today declared that the Web Authentication API (WebAuthn) is now an official web standard…" https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/04/w3c-approves-webauthn-as-the-web-standard-for-password-free-logins/ Meryl on the Effectiveness of Video Captioning (Interview) By Esi Hardy. "Meryl is a profoundly deaf lady from Texas who runs a marketing company. She talks Esi and also her clients about the effectiveness of captioning in videos…" https://www.celebratingdisability.co.uk/part-of-me/episode-15-meryl-on-the-effectiveness-of-video-captioning/ +08: TOOLS. Colors-For-All By Jean-Pierre Boutherin & Alexandre Saker. "an online application which, unlike most other competitors, enables you to easily check color contrasts and WCAG compliance (AA or AAA levels as defined by WCAG 2.0) between a range of specific colors in one shot…" https://amadeusitgroup.github.io/Colors-for-All/color-palette It's published as an open-source project at: https://github.com/AmadeusITGroup/Colors-for-All Touch Bookmarklet By Louis Rémi Babé. "Simulate touch events (swipe, rotate, pinch) with a mouse…" http://louisremi.github.io/touch-devtool/ Visual Event By Allan Jardine. "Events in Javascript are often seen as a bit of an enigma. This is odd given that Javascript is very much an event driven language, but it is typically down to their complex nature and difficulty to debug. To this end I've created Visual Event to help track events which are subscribed to DOM nodes…" http://www.sprymedia.co.uk/article/Visual+Event+2 Track Which Element Has Focus (in chrome) By Kayce Basques. "Suppose that you're testing the keyboard navigation accessibility of a page. When navigating the page with the Tab key, the focus ring sometimes disappears because the element that has focus is hidden. To track the focused element in DevTools…" https://developers.google.com/web/tools/chrome-devtools/accessibility/focus Rocket Validator (Hat tip to Dennis Lembrée) By Site Validator Team. "Reports on HTML & accessibility conformance of European government websites." https://rocketvalidator.com/leaderboards/european-parliaments +09: USABILITY. The Psychology of Choice: Why Less is More By Keep It Usable. "…Paradox of choice leads to choice paralysis…" http://www.keepitusable.com/blog/the-psychology-of-choice-why-less-is-more/ Unbridged Knowledge Gaps Hurt UX By Kim Flaherty and Kate Moran. "Many websites fail to provide the right information for research-based tasks, requiring unnecessary effort for users to piece together various information sources manually." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/unbridged-knowledge-gaps/ UI Copy: UX Guidelines for Command Names and Keyboard Shortcuts By Anna Kaley. "Labels for commands should be brief, informative, rely on verbs and adjectives, and avoid branded terms. Command shortcuts must limit the number of modifiers and follow standard conventions." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ui-copy/ Designing Tables for Desktop Apps with Lots of Data (Video) By Page Laubheimer. "Data-rich applications often include huge tables in their user interface; here are 3 UX guidelines for improving the usability of big tables." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/designing-tables-desktop-apps/ Intelligent Assistants: Where We Are and Where We Should Be (Video) By Raluca Budiu. "Are Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant truly intelligent? While they do have some 'intelligent' features, they are still far from what people expect such an intelligent assistant to do." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/intelligent-assistants-where/ DeathToAutoPlay - No More Audio and Video That Plays Automatically By Adam Engst. "Most technology annoyances fall into the category of 'death by a thousand cuts'." https://tidbits.com/2019/02/06/deathtoautoplay-no-more-audio-and-video-that-plays-automatically/ Interface as Luxury By Gerry McGovern. "…When it comes to digital technology, it's the interface, the screen, the voice, the information that denote luxury and the experience." http://gerrymcgovern.com/interface-as-luxury/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +10: 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.]