+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 19, Issue 03, July 15, 2020. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 03 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: DRUPAL. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: FLASH. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: TOOLS. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. W3C Accessibility Guidelines Working Group Updates (Video) By Rachael Montgomery. "Rachael Montgomery, co-chair of the W3C Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AGWG) gives an update on the status and roadmap of the Working Group in April 2020." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgMf6Uyyad4 Rachael's slides: https://www.w3.org/2020/05/AC/talk/AGWG-update WCAG-Mappings By Ian Lloyd. "Just some docs showing how WCAG 2.0 references map to WCAG 2.1 equivalents. If you need to update some dusty old documents, this might be a useful quick reference for you…" https://github.com/lloydi/WCAG-2.0--2.1-mappings UX Series: Universal Design and Digital Accessibility By Sarah Horton. "Universal design is an inclusive design framework used to create barrier-free designs that are navigable and usable by everyone, including people with disabilities. But what is universal design, and how does it relate to digital accessibility? This article presents an overview of the objectives and principles of universal design, provides common universal design examples, and explores how universal design applies to digital accessibility and designing a barrier-free digital world…" https://www.paciellogroup.com/ux-series-universal-design-and-digital-accessibility/ Adobe Inclusive Design Workshop By Matt May. "Content for a full-day workshop on inclusive design, including workbook modules, exercises, and (eventually) slides…" https://github.com/adobe-inclusive-design/id-workshop User Experience and Digital Accessibility By David Sloan. "In the first post in this series, we introduced the concept and practice of universal design…" https://www.paciellogroup.com/user-experience-and-digital-accessibility/ How to Use Alt Text and Accessible Images to Create Maximum Reach By Diana Czuchry. "…It might seem complicated at first, but images are one of the easier website components to make accessible. The key is to have appropriate alt text. As a quick recap, for the images themselves, make sure all images have a high enough contrast so they can be interpreted without colour and are zoomable. Next, use alt text to label them appropriately. Images that do an action should indicate the action in the alt text whereas those that simply demonstrate something should describe what they show. Images which are purely decorative should have no alt text…" https://evolvingweb.ca/blog/how-use-alt-text-and-accessible-images-create-maximum-reach In Web Design, Accessibility Shouldn't Be an Afterthought By Margaret Andersen. "More disability-led teams and semantically-rich markup, less needless decoration…" https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/in-web-design-accessibility-shouldnt-be-an-afterthought/ A Client's Role in Website Accessibility By Eric Karkovack. "Among the top priorities for web designers is in making sure that the websites we build are accessible. Everyone should be able to navigate and consume content - with or without assistive technologies…" https://speckyboy.com/clients-role-in-website-accessibility/ Lies, Damned Lies, Overlays and Widgets By Timothy Springer. "…I'll explain why these solutions are insufficient and examine their various shortcomings…" https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lies-damned-overlays-widgets-timothy-springer/ What Would an Ethical Overlay Look Like? By Karl Groves. "…The short answer to how an overlay can be ethical is: They can't. At least, the ones currently on the market can't without a massive pivot that completely trashes their marketing messaging and their products' features. In other words, it is too late for the overlay products currently on the market. They've already spent too much time marketing garbage products and making false claims. This doesn't mean that an add-on cannot be created that ethically helps to address a site's accessibility problems…" https://blog.tenon.io/what-would-an-ethical-overlay-look-like #a11y: Accessible or Ironic? By Tatiana Mac. "Is #a11y an accessible hashtag?…" https://tatianamac.com/posts/a11y-abbr/ Legal and Accessibility Impacts of COVID-19 (VIDEO) By Jack McElaney. Jack's presententation on the Legal and Accessibility Impacts of COVID-19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuTic4CInxc Patreon Digital Accessibility Agreement By Lainey Feingold. "Congratulations to Patreon! Posted here is the digital accessibility settlement agreement the company reached with the American Council of the Blind and individual blind creators and patrons, including Robert Kingett…" https://www.lflegal.com/2020/07/patreon-agreement/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Ten Modern Layouts in One Line of CSS By Una Kravets. "This post highlights a few powerful lines of CSS that do some serious heavy lifting and help you build robust modern layouts…" https://web.dev/one-line-layouts/ What is CSS Specificity? By Sarah Chima. "…CSS specificity is an important topic to understand if you want to get better at CSS. It is the set of rules applied to CSS selectors that determines which style is applied to an element. To understand this better, it's important we understand a related topic - Cascading in CSS…" https://sarahchima.com/blog/css-specificity/ Grids Part 1: To Grid or Not to Grid By Sarah Higley. "In my day-to-day work, I find myself talking to a lot of people who have a lot of accessibility problems with different tables and grids. Grids are right up there with combobox woes and tooltip mishaps in causing an outsize amount of pain to developers who are trying to get accessibility right…" https://sarahmhigley.com/writing/grids-part1/ Style Stage By Stephanie Eckles. "A modern CSS showcase styled by community contributions…" https://stylestage.dev/ +03: DRUPAL. What's Next for Drupal 9? By Leigh Ryan. "…Drupal 9.0 was launched earlier this month as a continuation of Drupal 8. This time around, the core update was more about updating the technology underlying Drupal's codebase and eliminating dependencies than introducing brand-new features, but fear not: we'll be getting some of those soon enough…" https://evolvingweb.ca/blog/whats-next-drupal-9 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. The Love-at-First-Sight Gaze Pattern on Search-Results Pages By Feifei Liu. "Eyetracking studies show that users sometimes look at only a single result on a search-results page because that result is good enough for their needs." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/love-at-first-sight-pattern/ Converting Rating Scales to 0-100 Points By Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis. "…An alternative way to handle both reporting rating scale data and interpreting different point scales is by converting scores to fall on a scale from 0 to 100 (technically a 101-point scale), something done with the popular System Usability Scale (SUS)…" https://measuringu.com/converting-scales-to-100-points/ +05: EVENTS. W3C WAI Interactive Update: Guidelines, Emerging Technologies, and New Resource July 23, 2020. Online https://www.eventbrite.com/e/w3c-wai-interactive-update-online-workshop-tickets-112703282552 10 Tips for Building an Accessible Online Course July 23, 2020. Online https://go.3playmedia.com/wbnr-07-23-2020-accessible-course-tips The CSS Layout Masterclass with Rachel Andrew September 10-11, 2020. Online https://smashingconf.com/online-workshops/workshops/rachel-andrew-sep/ Unmasking Accessibility: Moving Beyond a Band-Aid Solution November 12, 2020. Online https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/content.asp?admin=Y&contentid=631 +06: FLASH. The Rise and Fall of Adobe Flash By Richard C. Moss. "Before Flash Player sunsets this December, we talk its legacy with those who built it…" https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/07/the-rise-and-fall-of-adobe-flash/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. ARIA Grid As an Anti-Pattern By Adrian Roselli. "…First I will cover what an ARIA grid is per the ARIA specification, and then I will discuss two patterns proposed by the ARIA Authoring Practices…" https://adrianroselli.com/2020/07/aria-grid-as-an-anti-pattern.html A Little Bit of Plain Javascript Can Do a Lot By Julia Evans. I've never worked as a professional frontend developer, so even though I've been writing HTML/CSS/JS for 15 years for little side projects, all of the projects have been pretty small, sometimes I don't write any Javascript for years in between, and I often don't quite feel like I know what I'm doing. https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/06/19/a-little-bit-of-plain-javascript-can-do-a-lot/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Webwaste By Gerry McGovern. "We're pleased to share an excerpt from Chapter 9 of Gerry McGovern's Book World Wide Waste, from Silver Beach…" https://alistapart.com/article/webwaste/ Disability Language is a Nuanced Thing By Nicolas Steenhout. "Disability language is a tricky thing. What can you say? What expression is the correct one? How do you avoid offending people? What expression should you be using? It's tricky, and it keeps changing…" https://incl.ca/disability-language-is-a-nuanced-thing/ Sticking To It By Jeffery Zeldman. "…Never stop trying to do great work. Never get demoralized. Never stop caring. It sounds simple. It isn't… It works if you work it. I have not done it perfectly, not by a long shot. But keeping a positive attitude when an idea I've fallen in love with gets rejected remains the second most important thing…" https://automattic.design/2020/07/09/sticking-to-it/ +09: TOOLS. Inclusive Dates Datepicker By Tommy Feldt. "A human-friendly and fully accessible datepicker. Currently proof-of-concept, help me improve it…" https://github.com/fymmot/inclusive-dates Get Your Document's Readability and Level Statistics By Microsoft. "…When Word finishes checking the spelling and grammar and errors corrected, you can choose to display information about the reading level of the document, including readability scores according to the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level test and Flesch Reading Ease test…" https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/get-your-document-s-readability-and-level-statistics-85b4969e-e80a-4777-8dd3-f7fc3c8b3fd2 +10: USABILITY. A Week is a Year for COVID-19 Content By Gerry McGovern. there is a lot of great progress, but there is so much more progress needed if we are to get the maximum potential out of content and the Web so as to 'flatten the curve' and get our societies and economies up and running again. https://gerrymcgovern.com/a-week-is-a-year-for-covid-19-content/ Avoid These 10 UX Design Fails By Erica Martin. "The goal of UX design is to improve the customer journey through superior design. This involves the design, usability, and functionality of the overall app or website…" https://usabilitygeek.com/avoid-these-10-ux-design-fails/ A Tale of Three Skeuomorphs By Shift Happens. "You've always been a bit suspicious of the trashcan on your computer's imaginary desk top, and I'm here to tell you why…" https://www.getrevue.co/profile/shift-happens/issues/a-tale-of-three-skeuomorphs-242308 The Principle of Common Region: Containers Create Groupings By Aurora Harley. "In visual design, elements within the same boundary are perceived as related." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/common-region/ The Trouble with mailto Email Links and What to do Instead By Adam Silver and Amy Hupe. "…This is such a common problem and it feels like something browsers and operating systems should fix. We think the ideal solution would be for users who click or tap on the mailto link to see a menu with choices like: Send an email from Gmail, Email from another account, Copy email address, Share email address via… This would answer the most common needs, and gives most users a way forward…" https://adamsilver.io/articles/the-trouble-with-mailto-email-links-and-what-to-do-instead/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: 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.]