+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 18, Issue 18, October 30, 2019. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 18 CONTENTS. SECTION ONE: New references. What's new at the Web Design Reference site? https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/ New links in these categories: 01: ACCESSIBILITY. 02: BOOKS. 03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: HTML. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. A Multi-Modal Approach for Blind and Visually Impaired Developers to Edit Webpage Designs By Potluri et al. "Blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals are increasingly creating visual content online; however, there is a lack of tools that allow these individuals to modify the visual attributes of the content and verify the validity of those modifications…" https://doi.org/10.1145/3308561.3354626 Making Memes Accessible By Gleason et al. "Images on social media platforms are inaccessible to people with vision impairments due to a lack of descriptions that can be read by screen readers…" https://doi.org/10.1145/3308561.3353792 Digital Accessibility for Digital Teams: A Role by Role Guide By Perkins School for the Blind. "No matter your role, you can help your organization prioritize and implement digital accessibility…" https://www.perkins.org/access/blog/digital-accessibility-for-digital-teams-a-role-by-role-guide New Study: The Impact of Captions and Transcripts on Student Learning By Jaclyn Leduc. "The accessibility committee at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USFSP) just released a fascinating new report which gives insight into student's uses and perspectives of captions and interactive transcripts in online courses…" https://www.3playmedia.com/2019/10/24/the-impact-of-captions-and-transcripts-on-student-learning/ Why Are Accessible Websites so Hard to Build? By Robin Rendle. "…There are tools such as Lighthouse and browser extensions that are already out there, but making accessibility (and even performance, another silent fail) a part of our minute-to-minute workflow ensures that we can't ignore it. Something like this would encourage us to learn about the problems, give us links to potential solutions, and encourage us all to care for a relatively misunderstood part of front-end development." https://css-tricks.com/why-are-accessible-websites-so-hard-to-build/ The Internet Is for Everyone, Right? Not With a Screen Reader By Arielle Pardes. "Blind users have been fighting for a more inclusive web for over 20 years. Are lawsuits like the one against Domino's going to make a difference?…" https://www.wired.com/story/web-accessibility-blind-users-dominos/ Section 508 Conformance: A Need-to-Know Guide By Marissa Sapega. "…what's all the fuss about Section 508? Why is it important to organizations and businesses? Let's start at the beginning…" https://www.paciellogroup.com/legal/2019/10/section-508-conformance-a-need-to-know-guide/ LSAT to be Made More Accessible for Visually Impaired Students After Lawsuit By Kalysa To. "The analytical reasoning portion of the Law School Admission Test will be redesigned following a recent settlement with a legally blind test taker…" http://dailybruin.com/2019/10/23/lsat-to-be-made-more-accessible-for-visually-impaired-students-after-lawsuit/ +02: BOOKS. Barrell, Dylan. Agile Accessibility Explained: A practical guide to sustainable accessible software development. Amazon Digital Services, 2019. +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Box Alignment and Overflow By Chen Hui Jing. "Recently I was working on a few chat interfaces, and the general layout is typical to what you would see in most chat applications…" https://www.chenhuijing.com/blog/box-alignment-and-overflow/ The Current State of Styling Selects in 2019 By Chris Coyier. "Developers clearly want to style select dropdowns…" https://css-tricks.com/the-current-state-of-styling-selects-in-2019/ Spacing, Grids and Layouts By Elliot Dahl. "The organization of space is key to every great design…" https://www.designsystems.com/space-grids-and-layouts/ Pro Tip: CSS Grid != ARIA Grid. By Adrian Roselli. "CSS grid defines layout, ARIA grid defines relationships within a widget. Use CSS grid for nifty responsive layouts that shift and flow and adapt. Use ARIA grid if you want to re-create Excel in your browser. Probably do not use together." https://twitter.com/aardrian/status/1188998328987639808 Are There Random Numbers in CSS? By Alvaro Montoro. "…Generating random numbers at runtime is the territory of JavaScript, not so much CSS. Or is it? If we factor in a little user interaction, we actually can generate some degree of randomness in CSS. Let’s take a look…" https://css-tricks.com/are-there-random-numbers-in-css/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Auditing For Accessibility Problems With Firefox Developer Tools By Marco Zehe. "…Since its release back in June 2018, the Accessibility Inspector has become a valuable helper in identifying many common accessibility issues. You can rely on it to assist in designing your color palette. Use it to ensure you always offer good contrast and color choices. We build a11y features into the DevTools that you've come to depend on, so you do not need to download or search for external services or extensions first." https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/10/auditing-for-accessibility-problems-with-firefox-developer-tools/ Unmoderated User Tests: How and Why to Do Them By Kathryn Whitenton. "The 6 steps for running unmoderated usability testing are: define study goals, select testing software, write task descriptions, pilot the test, recruit participants, and analyze the results." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/unmoderated-usability-testing/ UX101: Complete Guide to In-Person User Research By Sarah Kahn. "In user experience, user research aims to uncover information about how a person or general group of people interact with a product and a brand as a whole…" https://www.uxbooth.com/articles/ux101-complete-guide-to-in-person-user-research/ +05: EVENTS. Creating a Digitally Accessible Website November 12, 2019. Marietta, Georgia, U.S.A. https://www.meetup.com/Atlanta-Accessibility-Meetup/events/265923334/ The ROI of Digital Accessibility December 10, 2019. Online https://www.maxability.co.in/2019/10/29/webinar-december-2019-the-roi-of-digital-accessibility/ Australian Accessibility Conference February 11-13, 2020. Perth, Australia http://ozewai.org/conference/ CSUN Assistive Technology Conference March 9-13, 2020. Anaheim, California, U.S.A. https://www.csun.edu/cod/conference/2019/sessions/index.php/ Online Learning Consortium Innovate 2020: Education Reimagined March 31-April 3, 2020. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/attend-2020/innovate/ +06: HTML. The Difference Between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript By Zell Liew. "In this article, I want to explain the difference between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with an analogy. I hope it helps you understand what these languages are, and what they do…" https://zellwk.com/blog/difference-between-html-css-javascript/ Focusing on Focus By Rakina Zata Amni. "Focus behavior in HTML had been under-specified for the past few years, and it was also quite confusing due to a variety of subtle differences between focusing methods, UA-specific behaviors, relation to the tabindex attribute, relations to shadow DOM, etc…" https://blog.whatwg.org/focusing-on-focus Heading Levels By Anne Van Kesteren. "…throwing out the entire feature and requiring everyone to use h1 through h6 forever, adjusting them accordingly based on the document they end up in, is not very appealing to me…" https://annevankesteren.nl/2019/10/heading-levels +07: MISCELLANEOUS. As the Internet Turns 50, We Must Protect it as a Force for Good By Web Foundation. "On October 29, 1969, the internet era began as UCLA Computer Science Professor Len Kleinrock sent the first message on ARPANET, a network of computers that would evolve to become the internet…" https://webfoundation.org/2019/10/as-the-internet-turns-50-we-must-protect-it-as-a-force-for-good/ You Choose By Brent Simmons. "…most importantly - nothing is stopping you from writing joyfully and creatively for the web! You can entertain, you can have fun, you can push the boundaries of the form, if you want to…" https://inessential.com/2019/10/29/you_choose The 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility Jeffrey P. Bigham, General Chair. The 2019 Proceedings are available. https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3308561&preflayout=flat a11yWeekTO Recap By Adrian Roselli. "This year the a11yTO team put together its third conference…" https://adrianroselli.com/2019/10/a11yweekto-recap.html Community in Toronto: What Made the #A11yTO Conferences So Spectacular? By Lainey Feingold. "I'm sitting in the airport on my way home from two conferences put on by #A11yTO. I've been trying to figure out what made the three days in Toronto so great. This post is what I've come up with…" https://www.lflegal.com/2019/10/a11yto/ Accessibility Scotland Conference - 2019 By Stéphanie Krus. "What I took back from it, plus this year: my experience as a volunteer, and lightning talk speaker…" https://medium.com/@stphaniekrus/accessibility-scotland-conference-2019-edition-fcef946c7e00 Design Thinking is Like Cooking (Video) By Sarah Gibbons. "As you learn design thinking, you progress through stages: being a beginner, an intermediate practitioner, and possessing advanced expertise. This progression is like learning to cook: you won't be a master chef on day 1, but there are appropriate skills to aim for at each level." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/design-thinking-cooking/ +08: STANDARDS, GUIDELINES & PATTERNS. Using the Platform By Tim Kadlec. "…Use the platform until you can't, then augment what's missing. And when you augment, do so with care because the responsibility of ensuring the security, accessibility, and performance that the platform tries to give you by default now falls entirely on you." Use the platform until you can’t, then augment what’s missing. And when you augment, do so with care because the responsibility of ensuring the security, accessibility, and performance that the platform tries to give you by default now falls entirely on you." https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2019-10-21-using-the-platform/ Living Standard (Music Video) By Bruce Lawson. "A song about HTML5, in homage to Cliff Richard's 'Living Doll'…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fczTRQjGq30 +09: TYPOGRAPHY. Decimal and Chill By John Boardley. "Type designers take care of the details, so that we aren't unnecessarily distracted by them…" https://ilovetypography.com/2019/10/28/new-fonts-decimal-netflix-and-chill/ +10: USABILITY. Better Labels for Website Links: the 4 S's for Encouraging Clicks (Video) By Kate Moran. "4 guidelines for writing the link texts on websites to ensure users click the right options. Links should be Specific, Sincere, Substantial, and Succinct." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/better-link-labels/ Footer Links Should be Divided into Distinct Semantic Sections (13% of Sites Don’t) By Rebecca Hugo. "…This article takes a look at the impacts of a poorly designed footer that we’ve observed during our large-scale usability testing and what can be done to avoid these issues, including…" https://baymard.com/blog/footer-links-ecommerce The 3 Response Time Limits in Interaction Design (Video) By Jakob Nielsen. "User interfaces must be fast, or users will give up. (In the case of websites, they'll leave if pages download too slowly.) The exact maximum response times vary by usage circumstances, and should be either 0.1, 1.0, or 10 seconds." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/3-response-time-limits-interaction-design/ Good UX = Boring UI. Don't Be Creative By Nick Rollins. "…It's tempting to believe that a successful UI is the result of creative genius. From a holistic perspective, creativity is necessary for innovation. However, from a user's perspective, creativity just gets in the way…" https://uxengineer.com/good-ux-boring-ui/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? Accessibility Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/accessibility.html Association Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/associations.html Book Listings. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/books.html Cascading Style Sheets Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/css.html Color Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/color.html Drupal Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.html Evaluation & Testing Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/testing.html Event Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/events.html HTML Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html.html Information Architecture Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/architecture.html JavaScript Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/javascript.html Miscellaneous Web Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/misc.html Navigation Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/navigation.html PHP Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/php.html Sites & Blogs Listing. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/standards.html Tool Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/tools.html Typography Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/type.html Usability Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/usability.html XML Information. https://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: https://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.]