+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 18, Issue 19, November 7, 2019. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 19 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 11: TOOLS. 12: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. I Used Switch Control for a Day By Hampus Sethfors. "Stephen Hawking used something called a switch to communicate, author books and surf the web…" https://axesslab.com/switch-control-for-a-day/ Accessibility in d3 Donut Charts By Lindsey Kopacz. "…I am going to be going through how to make an accessible donut chart with d3. I'm not going to go through all the bells and whistles and interactions. It's going to be a donut chart with accessible data…" https://www.a11ywithlindsey.com/blog/accessibility-d3-donut-charts User Personas as an Inclusive Design and Development Tool By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "In her User Personas as an Inclusive Design and Development Tool presentation at WordCamp US 2019, Carie Fisher discussed digital inclusion and shared practical steps web professionals can take to create accessible digital products and services…" https://www.lireo.com/wordcamp-us-2019-user-personas-inclusive-design/ Should Accessibility Features be Optional? By Chris Ferdinandi. "Spoiler alert: no, they shouldn't…I don't make accessibility features something you can turn off, and I don't think you should in your scripts, either. Defaults matter." https://gomakethings.com/should-accessibility-features-be-optional/ Federal Website Access Lawsuit Numbers Increase 7 Percent in 2019, With Possible Bump from Supreme Court Denial of Cert in Domino's By Kristina M. Launey and Minh N. Vu. "Website accessibility lawsuit filings in federal court in 2019 are on track to exceed 2018. Will we see an increase in filings as a result of the Supreme Court's decision not to review the Ninth Circuit's Order in Robles v. Domino's?" https://www.adatitleiii.com/2019/11/federal-website-access-lawsuit-numbers-increase-7-percent-in-2019-with-possible-bump-from-supreme-court-denial-of-cert-in-dominos/ How a Web Accessibility Lawsuit is Created & Settled By Sofia Enamorado. "…We sat down for a webinar with UsableNet, the researchers behind the ADA Web and Accessibility Report, to learn about the life of a typical ADA lawsuit…" https://www.3playmedia.com/2019/11/04/web-accessibility-lawsuit/ +02: BOOKS. Meiert, Jens Oliver. Upgrade Your HTML (the Booklet). Amazon Digital Services LLC, 2019. +03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. New CSS for Styling Underlines on the Web (Video) By Jen Simmons. "Finally in 2019, we have new CSS that allows us a lot of powerful ways to style underlines. Jen Simmons walks you through the options…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZS-7RX_c7g Things We Can't (Yet) Do In CSS By Rachel Andrew. "In this article, Rachel Andrew looks at some common layout patterns that we can't yet do on the web and the CSS Specifications that might let us achieve them in the future…" https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/11/css-things-cant-yet-do/ +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. Calibrate Your Accessibility Evaluation With ACT By Shadi Abou-Zahra. "Today W3C published Accessibility Conformance Testing (ACT) Rules Format 1.0 as a W3C Recommendation (web standard). It was the joint work of many people over the past three years…" https://www.w3.org/blog/2019/10/calibrate-your-accessibility-evaluation-with-act/ Supporting the Design Phase with Accessibility Heuristics Evaluations By Denis Boudreau. "…when you don't plan for accessibility early in the UX phase, you're planning to fail at accessibility…" https://www.deque.com/blog/supporting-the-design-phase-with-accessibility-heuristics-evaluations/ Location, Privilege and Performant Websites By Stephanie Stimac. "Testing on a <$100 Android device on a 3G network should be an integral part of testing your website. Not everyone is on a brand-new device or upgrades often, especially with the price point of a high-end phones these days. When we design and build our websites with the outliers in mind, whether it's for performance or even user experience, we build an experience that can be easy for all to access and use - and that's what the web is about, access and information for all." https://blog.stephaniestimac.com/posts/10-30-2019-performance/ Common Traps in User Needs Research and How to Avoid Them By David Travis. "Whether you call it a field visit, a contextual inquiry or a customer discovery interview, the goal of early stage research is the same: to uncover users' needs. Here are 5 mistakes I've seen crop up time and again in this kind of research…" https://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/common-traps-in-user-needs-research.html Are Your Web Metrics Reliable? By Gerry McGovern. "Web analytics are highly susceptible to error, manipulation and misinterpretation. They should never be depended on as the sole source of insight…" https://gerrymcgovern.com/are-your-web-metrics-reliable/ Between-Subject vs. Within-Subject Study Design in User Research (Video) By Raluca Budiu. "There are two ways to structure a UX research study when we're testing two (or more) designs: we can have each design tested by different people, or we can reuse the same users for all conditions. Each approach has some advantages and problems." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/between-subject-vs-within-subject-research/ +05: EVENTS. How to Deliver an Accessible and Inclusive Presentation November 19, 2019. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. https://www.meetup.com/a11ychi/events/266261921/ Live stream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqnghHm0pxI Live captions: http://www.streamtext.net/player?event=CDA Mobile Assistive Technology and Testing Techniques November 20, 2019. Online https://zoom.us/webinar/register/5815729613629/WN_ovog8mmIQNea6vNKMPpQlg Translating Design Wireframes Into Accessible HTML/CSS November 20, 2019. Online https://www.smashingmagazine.com/smashing-tv/translating-design-wireframes-into-accessible-html-css/ UIArchConf April 1-2, 2020. New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A. http://uiarchconf.com/ An Event Apart Washington DC April 13-15, 2020. Washington, D.C., U.S.A. https://aneventapart.com/event/washington-dc-2020 The Web Conference 2020 April 20-24, 2020. Taipei, Taiwan https://www2020.thewebconf.org/ Smashing Conference - San Francisco April 21-22, 2020. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. https://smashingconf.com/sf-2020 +06: HTML. A TPG Halloween Special: the Horrors Lurking in Your HTML By Liz Certa. "…HTML tends to be the most neglected of the JavaScript-HTML-CSS triad that makes every website work, much to the consternation of accessibility engineers everywhere. Put a little elbow grease into your HTML and you'll find your site will run quicker, debug easier, and become more accessible by virtue of simply being built well. And isn't that what every engineer wants - to build things well?" https://developer.paciellogroup.com/blog/2019/10/a-tpg-halloween-special-the-horrors-lurking-in-your-html/ Bad Practices in HTML Curated by Manuel Matuzović. "A collection of bad practices in HTML, copied from real websites…" https://www.htmhell.dev/ +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Tree Testing to Evaluate Information Architecture Categories (Video) By Page Laubheimer. "Tree testing is a supplement to card sorting as a user research method for assessing the categories in an information architecture (especially a website IA and its proposed or existing navigation menu structure)" https://www.nngroup.com/videos/tree-testing/ +08: JAVASCRIPT. Demystifying WAI-ARIA By David MacDonald. "18 WAI-ARIA attributes that every web developer should know…" https://davidmacd.com/blog/wai-aria-accessbility-for-average-web-developers.html Playing with State By Sarah M. Higley. "In an effort to convince everyone (who reads these blog posts) that I don't only obsess over tooltips, let's talk about another seemingly simple concept and make it unexpectedly complex. This time, we're tackling the play/pause toggle button…" https://sarahmhigley.com/writing/playing-with-state/ JavaScript Isn't Always Available and It's Not the User's Fault By Adam Silver. "…the problem is less about the 1% of users who always visit your site without JavaScript and more about the 1% of visits to your site which result in users experiencing your site without JavaScript. And through no fault of their own…" https://adamsilver.io/articles/javascript-isnt-always-available-and-its-not-the-users-fault/ What is super() in JavaScript? By Bailey Jones. "What's happening when you see some JavaScript that calls super()…" https://css-tricks.com/what-is-super-in-javascript/ +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Accessibility Toronto Conference 2019 Summary By Dennis Lembree. "The third annual Accessibility Toronto Conference was held recently at TELUS in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada…" http://www.webaxe.org/accessibility-toronto-conference-2019/ Internet Turns 50, Just Might Catch On By Adrian Roselli. "My parents argued the Internet was a fad. They may still be right…" https://adrianroselli.com/2019/10/internet-turns-50-just-might-catch-on.html The Web Falls Apart By Baldur Bjarnason. "The web's circle has expanded to contain the entire world. But the centre is not holding…" https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/the-weakened-web/ The Web is Not Dying By Chris Ferdinandi. "…The web platform, this beautiful thing that we build sites and apps on, is alive and thriving…" https://gomakethings.com/the-web-is-not-dying/ +10: NAVIGATION. How to Design: Accessible Search Bars By Marty Seinamets. "An in-depth guide to designing more accessible search bars…" https://uxdesign.cc/how-to-design-search-bars-6d4ca9944ad3 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/ +11: TOOLS. Significant WAVE Updates By Jared Smith. "WebAIM is happy to have released significant updates to the WAVE suite of web accessibility testing tools…" https://webaim.org/blog/significant-wave-updates/ +12: USABILITY. The Evolution of Material Design's Text Fields By Susanna Zaraysky. "How user research reshaped the design of Google's open-source text fields…" https://medium.com/google-design/the-evolution-of-material-designs-text-fields-603688b3fe03 Content-First for a Better User Experience By Carrie Hane. "…This is a people problem. We have all the tools we need. Too many, in fact. Go back to pencil and paper. Sticky notes and whiteboards. Don't wait for the perfect time or the perfect project. They won't happen. Figure out what you can do tomorrow - or today - to start the shift to a content-first process. Don't wait to be asked. No one is going to ask you to do this. Make it happen. When you do, everyone is happy…" https://www.tanzenconsulting.com/blog/2019/9/18/content-first-for-a-better-user-experience Content: the Design System Element You Forgot By Kate Kenyon. "…Content and design are parallel, intertwined communication systems. They are fundamentally dependent on each other for successful outcomes…Content and design can integrate right down to having repeatable variants and data references within design tokens. It's entirely possible to integrate that deeply, and scale up content rapidly. So I don't buy the arguments put forward so far that content doesn't scale, or that it should be an afterthought…" https://uxdesign.cc/content-the-design-system-element-you-forgot-e36d8c49a042 [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +13: 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.]