+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 17, Issue 51, June 12, 2019. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 51 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: HTML. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 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. Target Size and 2.5.5 By Adrian Roselli. "Regardless of what accessibility conformance level you target, try to ensure that interactive controls are at least 44 by 44 pixels in size. Links in blocks of text are exempt…" http://adrianroselli.com/2019/06/target-size-and-2-5-5.html Indicating Focus to Improve Accessibility By Hidde de Vries. "It's a common, but fairly easy-to-fix accessibility issue: lack of indicating focus. In this post I will explain what we mean by focus and show you how focus outlines make your site easier to use…" https://hiddedevries.nl/en/blog/2019-06-06-indicating-focus-to-improve-accessibility Selfish Accessibility (Video) By Adrian Roselli. "We can all pretend that we're helping others by making web sites and software accessible, but we are really making them better for our future selves…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O5b529V96g Keep it Simple By Andy Bell. "One thing that is often forgotten about accessibility is that keeping things simple and utilising semantic HTML gets you most of the way towards providing a fully accessible experience for everyone…" https://andy-bell.design/wrote/keep-it-simple/ Form Accessibility: A Practical Guide By Jimmy Somsanith. "How to make a form accessible?…" https://itnext.io/form-accessibility-a-practical-guide-4062b7e2dd14 The Anatomy of Accessible Forms: The Problem with Placeholders By Raghavendra Peri. "…In part one of the series on accessible forms, we will see why using a placeholder is not great from the accessibility standpoint and how to use a placeholder attribute successfully…" https://www.deque.com/blog/accessible-forms-the-problem-with-placeholders/ Understanding SC 3.1.1 Language of Page By Raghavendra Satish Peri. "This success criterion requires that each web page of a site has its default human language programmatically defined…" https://www.digitala11y.com/understanding-sc-3-1-1-language-of-page/ As Summer Approaches, the SDNY Once Again Provides Hope for Businesses Exhausted by Repeated Website Accessibility Lawsuits By Joshua A. Stein and Shira M. Blank. "While decided on multiple grounds, the Court's decision is primarily based on mootness, providing businesses who have already taken the necessary steps to comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at Levels A and AA, and to also maintain compliance going forward, with a potential blueprint to defeat 'secondary strike' lawsuits brought in the SDNY…" https://www.natlawreview.com/article/summer-approaches-sdny-once-again-provides-hope-businesses-exhausted-repeated +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Semantically Identifying a Font Icon with role="img" By W3C Accessibility Guidelines Working Group. "The objective of this technique is to show how to semantically identify an element that uses a font file for icons. When a user overrides font-family these icons typically disappear unless there is a means to identify them. The point is to provide a technique to differentiate icon fonts from general font (text) usage…" https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Techniques/aria/ARIA24 The CSS background-image Property as an Anti-Pattern By Andrew Welch. "The CSS back­ground-image property allowed us to do some amaz­ing things, but in most cases, it's time to leave it behind…" https://nystudio107.com/blog/the-css-background-image-property-as-an-anti-pattern Test Your Specificity Chops By Estelle Weyl. "What is the specificity of the following selectors…" https://estelle.github.io/CSS/selectors/exercises/specificity.html The CSS Mindset By Michelle Barker. "…Other programming languages often work in controlled environments, like servers. They expect certain conditions to be true at all times, and can therefore be understood as concrete instructions as to how a program should execute. CSS on the other hand works in a place that can never be fully controlled, so it has to be flexible by default…" https://mxb.dev/blog/the-css-mindset/ +03: COLOR Oddities in Color Perception By Alastair Campbell. "I've seen a few posts/tweets recently highlighting apparent issues in the colour-contrast testing for WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)…" https://alastairc.uk/2019/04/oddities-in-color-perception/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Why User Interviews Fail By Maria Rosala. "User interviews are often used for the wrong purpose, they're not planned or analyzed properly, and stakeholders don't see the value in doing them." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-user-interviews-fail/ +05: EVENTS. Introduction to TPG's Free Accessibility Testing Tool: ARC Toolkit June 20, 2019. Online https://zoom.us/webinar/register/6715596580500/WN_euxVglp7TYKiL8l7rzCyng ICT Accessibility Testing Symposium October 1-2, 2019. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. https://2019ict.org/ Smashing Magazine Conference October 15-16, 2019. New York City, New York, U.S.A. https://smashingconf.com/ny-2019/ New York City UX Conference October 12-18, 2019, U.S.A. New York, New York, U.S.A. https://www.nngroup.com/training/new-york-city/ World Usability Congress October 16-17, 2019. Graz, Austria https://worldusabilitycongress.com/ Disability Rights Advocates New York Gala October 21, 2019. New York, New York, U.S.A. https://dralegal.org/dras-2019-nyc-gala/ #a11yTOConf October 24-25, 2019. Toronto, Canada https://conf.a11yto.com/ +06: HTML. The Problem with Web Components By Adam Silver. "…It's possible-and certainly my hope-that web components will improve over time and these issues will be resolved. But for now, I'm holding fire on them. In this article I'll explain why that is, and suggest an alternative way to develop components in the meantime…" https://adamsilver.io/articles/the-problem-with-web-components/ +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Paper Prototyping 101 (Video) By Rachel Krause. "Using paper prototypes is a great way to test a design idea and get usability feedback quickly. You can test whether a layout makes sense to users and make immediate changes if they run into issues." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/paper-prototyping-101/ +08: JAVASCRIPT. Fallback Considerations for ARIA role=img By Scott O'Hara. "By using ARIA's role="img" you can change the semantics of an element to expose itself to the browser's accessibility API as an image or 'graphic'…" https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2019/06/10/no-fallback-drawback.html +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Disability Etiquette: University of Guelph Accessibility Conference By John McNabb. Info and slides from John's presentation at Guelph University's Annual Accessibility Conference. https://developer.paciellogroup.com/blog/2019/06/disability-etiquette-university-of-guelph-accessibility-conference/ Privisight By Jeremy Keith. "The New York Times has created a collection of articles relating to privacy…" https://tinyletter.com/clearleft/letters/clearletter-from-clearleft-privisight +10: TYPOGRAPHY. The Case Against Banning Italics By Ted Page. "Why a blanket ban on italics for accessibility reasons is likely to do more harm than good…" https://accessible-digital-documents.com/blog/banning-italics/ +11: USABILITY. Content is Service, Service is Content By Gerry McGovern. "…if you want to fix the problem, first we must fix the organization. First rule of thumb is no more content, no more services. Just customer tasks. The organization must organize around the customers' tasks…" http://gerrymcgovern.com/content-is-service-service-is-content/ Why Text Buttons Hurt Mobile Usability By Anthony Tseng. "The usability standards for buttons are higher for mobile apps than desktop apps…" https://uxmovement.com/mobile/why-text-buttons-hurt-mobile-usability/#UX Readability Guidelines By Content Design London. "Imagine a collaboratively developed, universal content style guide, based on usability evidence. With guidelines for creating easy to comprehend content, we can design inclusively by default…" http://readabilityguidelines.myxwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Main/WebHome How Privilege Impacts Empathy By Jess Dale. "…The path to real change begins by acknowledging our participation in developing products and systems that reinforce economic inequality and racism, whether directly or indirectly. The truth is, we're responsible." https://uxdesign.cc/how-privilege-impacts-empathy-b34ad0c16431 How to Avoid the 24 Perilous Pitfalls to UX Maturity (PDF) By Human Factors. "A conversation with Eric Schaffer CEO and Founder Human Factors International…" https://humanfactors.com/downloads/whitepapers/avoid_the_24_perilous_pitfalls_to_ux_maturity.pdf UX vs UI vs IA vs IxD: 4 Confusing Digital Design Terms Defined By Mockplus. "We explained What is UX design? What is UI design? What is Interaction Design and What is Information Architecture in this article…" https://medium.muz.li/ux-vs-ui-vs-ia-vs-ixd-4-confusing-digital-design-terms-defined-c4c3d2276fa6 User Experience vs. Customer Experience: What's The Difference? By Kim Flaherty. "Customer experience (CX) is a term commonly used to define UX over long periods of time." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-vs-cx/ Shifting an Engineering Driven Company to Be User Centered (Video) By Jakob Nielsen. "Jakob Nielsen answers the question of how one can transform an organization from being focused on engineering to being focused on customers' needs." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/shifting-engineering-user-centered/ [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.]