+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 19, Issue 33, February 10, 2021. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 33 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: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: DRUPAL. 04: EVALUATION & TESTING. 05: EVENTS. 06: HTML. 07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 08: JAVASCRIPT. 09: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: TOOLS. 11: USABILITY. 12: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. SECTION TWO: 13: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. aria-description: By Public Demand and to Thunderous Applause By Steve Faulkner. "aria-description is the ARIA attribute you wanted, it makes adding a description (for screen reader users ONLY) so much simpler…" https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2021/02/09/aria-description-by-public-demand-and-to-thunderous-applause/ Why and How to Create Accessible Social Media and Website Content By Meryl K. Evans. "Content accessibility isn't just the responsibility of the design and production team. It's everyone’s job." https://meryl.net/digital-content-accessibility/ Why Brands Must Make Accessibility the Cultural Default By Andrew Kirkpatrick. "…As more industries begin to scale their products and services to make the shift to digital, the importance of accessibility is magnified and can no longer be something that is overlooked…" https://www.atlantic57.com/altered/why-brands-must-make-accessibility-the-cultural-default/ It's Easier When You Do It Earlier By Hidde de Vries. "Web accessibility becomes easier and cheaper, when you address it earlier. In this post, we'll look at various ways to do that, like picking the right CMS and making accessibility part of the agile process. Combine them for maximum effect…" https://hiddedevries.nl/en/blog/2021-02-04-its-easier-when-you-do-it-earlier Accessibility Auditing and Ego By Eric Bailey. "At its core, an accessibility audit is about determining if a disabled person can use a digital experience…" https://ericwbailey.design/writing/accessibility-auditing-and-ego/ This mini-thread demonstrates… By Adrian Roselli. "…how technically valid but poorly implemented tabs can be frustrating…Test with people, do not follow a pattern just because a big name brand made it, and maybe don't over-engineer links in the first place…" https://twitter.com/aardrian/status/1358767789113229312 Entering A New Digital Age for Accessibility and Inclusion By Denis Boudreau. "…I will focus on some of the underlying tenets that hold the practice of digital inclusion together: laws and standards…" https://uxdesign.cc/latest-news-from-the-accessibility-front-legal-and-standards-landscape-5cc0938b3b28 Methodology for heuristic evaluation of the accessibility of statistical charts for people with low vision and color vision deficiency By Rubén Alcaraz Martínez, Mireia Ribera Turró, and Toni Granollers Saltiveri. "…The research presented in this paper aim is to create a heuristic set of indicators to evaluate the accessibility of statistical charts focusing on the needs of people with low vision and CVD…" https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-156959/v1 Why Just Installing Plugins Isn't a Magic Fix for Accessibility with Nick Croft (Podcast) By Emily Schiola. "Welcome to Press This, the WordPress community podcast from WMR. Here host David Vogelpohl sits down with guests from around the community to talk about the biggest issues facing WordPress developers. The following is a transcription of the original recording…" https://torquemag.io/2021/02/accessibility-nick-croft/ The Need for Accessibility Compliance as Code By Luke Fretwell. "…Baking VPAT into the code-as-compliance process isn't a panacea. But it is a humble beginning to prioritizing accessibility and making a cumbersome process less so. By shifting the mindset and approach to one of open principles, machine-readable accessibility can become equally important to security in the compliance process. By doing this, we move closer to truly protecting and serving everyone." https://gcn.com/articles/2021/02/04/accessibility-compliance-as-code.aspx New Web Content Accessibility Standard, WCAG 3.0, Promises Far-Reaching Impact By Sara Baxenberg, Megan Brown, Charles Farlow, Tawanna Lee. "…As, regulators, agencies, and courts continue to turn to the WCAG as the touchstone of their considerations, WCAG 3.0 could become even more widely used in standard setting, risk mitigation, and regulatory compliance strategies because of the wider range of disabilities, technologies, and tools that fall within the scope of the guidelines…" https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/new-web-content-accessibility-standard-4698390/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Exploring the Complexities of Width and Height in CSS By Uri Shaked and Michal Porag. "Let's explore the complexities of how CSS computes the width and height dimensions of elements…" https://css-tricks.com/exploring-the-complexities-of-width-and-height-in-css/ +03: DRUPAL. Drupal, Two Decades Later By Suzanne Dergacheva. "…If you take yourself back to January 15, 2001, this was the same day that Wikipedia was founded, before the rise of Google, before wifi was available everywhere you went, and before cat videos were popular online. Drupal emerged as a new model for building a website…" https://evolvingweb.ca/blog/drupal-two-decades-later +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. How to Test Content with Users By Kate Moran. "When evaluating content, pay extra attention to whom you recruit. Closely tailor tasks to your participants and get comfortable with silence." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/testing-content-websites/ How to Statistically Compare Two Net Promoter Scores By Jim Lewis and Jeff Sauro. "…In this article, we present a new significance test for the NPS based on the NPS adjusted-Wald confidence interval and describe how to compute a confidence interval around the difference between scores…" https://measuringu.com/nps-significance-test/ First Diverge, Then Converge During UX Workshops (Video) By Therese Fessenden. "A general technique that's helpful in many kinds of UX workshops and design ideation is to first have team members work independently to create diverging ideas and solutions. Then, as a separate step, everybody works together to converge on the final outcome. https://www.nngroup.com/videos/diverge-converge-technique/ +05: EVENTS. Challenging Accessibility Assumptions: Screen Readers February 22, 2021. Online https://www.eventbrite.com/e/challenging-accessibility-assumptions-screen-readers-tickets-136718250969 Automated Accessibility Testing in JavaScript Frameworks February 23, 2021. Online https://groups.drupal.org/node/536297 Accessibility in an Agile Methodology February 23, 2021. Online https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/content.asp?admin=Y&contentid=749 WebAIM Virtual Training March 3-4, 2021. Online https://webaim.org/training/virtual/ ConveyUX Seattle March 12-13, 2021. Online https://conveyux.com/conveyux-seattle/ Put the Law in your Pocket: Accessibility as a Human Right March 16, 2021. Online https://www.meetup.com/Portland-Accessibility-and-User-Experience-Meetup/events/274867939/ Ignite UX Michigan March 16 and 23, 2021. Online http://www.igniteuxmi.com/ +06: HTML. For many of us HTML as a language is expressed… By Steve Faulkner. "…visually and often implicitly as GUIs (often dressed in fancy CSS threads). For others it is an aural and explicitly expressed language, one in which shape, color and decoration play little part…" https://twitter.com/stevefaulkner/status/1357370903609409539 +07: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. Improving Wireframe Accessibility: A More Inclusive Design Process By Isaac Durazo. "Whether you are well-versed in UX Design or new to the field, you have likely heard the term 'wireframe'…" https://bocoup.com/blog/improving-wireframe-accessibility-a-more-inclusive-design-process World Information Architecture Day Returns February 27 By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "Mark your calendars! World Information Architecture (IA) Day 2021 returns for the tenth year on February 27, 2021 for a one-day celebration…" https://www.lireo.com/world-information-architecture-day-2021/ +08: JAVASCRIPT. hasPopup hasPoop By Steve Faulkner. "In theory aria-haspopup could be really useful as a hint to screen reader peeps as to what type of content will pop up when they activate a control…" https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2021/02/02/haspopup-haspoop/ The Difference Between let, var, and const for Defining JavaScript Variables (and why you should probably just use let) By Chris Ferdinandi. "A few years ago, I very passionately only used var to define variables. A little over a year ago, I softened, suggesting that let isn’t a bad thing depending on your browser support needs…" https://gomakethings.com/the-difference-between-let-var-and-const-for-defining-javascript-variables-and-why-you-should-probably-just-use-let/ +09: MISCELLANEOUS. Why The IndieWeb? (Video) By Heydon Pickering. "This is the story of the birth of the web, its loss of innocence, its decline, and what we can do to make it a bit less gross. Or if you prefer, this is the video in which I say the expression 'barbecue sets' far too many times…" https://briefs.video/videos/why-the-indieweb/ Conversations with Accessibility Experts: Regine Gilbert By Joe Devon. "…Gilbert is a User Experience Designer based in New York City. She is a professor at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. She teaches user experience design and assistive technology to students…" https://blog.diamond.la/conversations-with-accessibility-experts-regine-gilbert Conversations with Accessibility Experts: Frances West By Joe Devon. "This month, Diamond had the chance to talk with renowned accessibility expert, Frances West. West's resume is as extensive as it is impressive. An author, TEDtalk speaker, professor, and advisor, are just a few distinguishing roles given to West over the years, including being IBM's first Chief Accessibility Officer…" https://blog.diamond.la/conversations-with-accessibility-experts-frances-west Conversations with Accessibility Experts: Dennis Lembree By Joe Devon. "…Lembree has nearly 25 years experience in the digital publishing and development industries, much of the time as a front-end web developer. He is currently the Director of Accessibility at Diamond Web Services. Previously, Mr. Lembree worked for five year as Senior Accessibility Consultant at Deque Systems, and several years on the PayPal and eBay accessibility teams. He also has experience at several start-up companies and has contracted at large corporations including Google, Ford, and Disney…" https://blog.diamond.la/conversations-with-accessibility-experts-dennis-lembree +10: TOOLS. How Cool Accessibility Tools Can Make Your Life Easier By Kat Shaw. "…These are tools that will assist you in identifying and fixing accessibility (a11y) issues and are meant to be used daily with the end goal of making the web more accessible to all…" https://www.lullabot.com/articles/accessibility-tools-make-your-life-easier Evinced is Pushing the Limits of Automated Accessibility Testing By Marcy Sutton. "As an accessibility advocate and web developer, I've spent a lot of time using and recommending accessibility testing tools. I want the process of developing accessible websites to be as successful and encouraging as possible so we can make the internet a more inclusive place…" https://marcysutton.com/evinced-automated-accessibility-testing Evinced Accessibility Site Scanner By Bruce Lawson. "…The system is currently in Beta and definitely needs some proper usability testing with real target users and UI love. One niggle is the inaccuracy of its knowledge base (linked from the error reports)…All in all, the ability of Evinced to identify repeated 'components' and understand the intended use of some splodge of JavaScriptted labyrinth of divs is a welcome feature and its main selling point. It's definitely one to watch when the UX is sleeker (presumably when it comes out of Beta)." https://www.brucelawson.co.uk/2021/evinced-accessibility-site-scanner/ Beautiful Accessibility with Floating Focus By Guido Bouman. "A package published by Dutch tech agency Q42 to empower the end user, while keeping the designers on your team happy…" https://engineering.q42.nl/floating-focus/ +11: USABILITY. Change Has Become an Excuse for Lazy Design By Gerry McGovern. "…Structure matters. Organization matters. Metadata matters. Information architecture matters more today than it ever mattered. We must design things on the basis that we want them to last, rather than we expect them to change. Because when you expect nothing to last, nothing does." https://gerrymcgovern.com/change-has-become-an-excuse-for-lazy-design/ We Value Your Privacy (At About $0.50): Dark Patterns in UI Copy By Graeme Fulton. "…'We value your privacy.' For every website that says it, why do I get the feeling that the complete opposite is true?…" https://prototypr.io/post/we-value-your-privacy-at-about-0-50-dark-patterns-in-ui-copy/ Why I'm Losing Faith in UX By Mark Hurst. "For many years I believed in UX. The so-called "user experience" of a website, app, or other digital product could spell the difference between success and failure. After all, an easy, intuitive, or convenient UX would make the customer's life better, while simultaneously achieving the team's goals - usually, higher profit or lower service costs…" https://creativegood.com/blog/21/losing-faith-in-ux.html Remote Design Work: Top Challenges By Rachel Krause. @rachelkrau "Communication is the top challenge when designing remotely, according to 213 UX professionals. Receiving feedback, replicating informal conversations, and maintaining a clear direction on projects were the biggest communication concerns." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/remote-design-challenges/ +12: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. Volkswagen's Low-carbon ID4 Website By Tom Greenwood. "For the past few months, we've been collaborating with Canadian agency Type 1 and Volkswagen on a project called Carbon Neutral Net…" https://www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/vw-low-carbon-website/ [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 WebWaste & Sustainability Information. https://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/webwaste.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.]