+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 19, Issue 42, April 14, 2021. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 42 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: EVALUATION & TESTING. 04: EVENTS. 05: HTML. 06: MISCELLANEOUS. 07: NAVIGATION. 08: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 09: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. More often than not, the answer to making a design more usable/accessible is simplify it. By Sara Soueidan. "We tend to overcomplicate things a lot. The answers usually lie in fewer and simpler approaches." https://twitter.com/SaraSoueidan/status/1381606057546506244 Practical Accessibility, Part 2: Name (almost) Everything By Maggie Wachs. "When browsers and screen readers encounter an element, they use semantic markup and ARIA attributes to tell users what it is (ul is a list) and how it's supposed to work (role="menu"). But they can't say why it's there without an accessible name…" https://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/practical-accessibility-2-names/ An Accessible Toggle By Kitty Giraudel. "Toggles (or sometimes 'toggle switches') are heavily used in modern interfaces. They tend to be relatively straightforward and can be thought as glorified checkboxes. Yet, they are often made inaccessible one way or another…" https://kittygiraudel.com/2021/04/05/an-accessible-toggle/ Designing Custom Focus Indicators By Matsuko Friedland. "…Looking forward to the WCAG 2.2 working draft (the next version of WCAG, which is expected to be finalized this year) there are three requirements related to the visual design of focus indicators…" https://craftcms.com/accessibility/accessible-focus-styles-with-css-variables Short Note on Role None or Presentation By Steve Faulkner. "…All modern browsers support both role='none' and role='presentation'…" https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2021/04/12/short-note-on-role-none-or-presentation/ Meeting a Higher Standard: A Case Study of Accessibility Compliance in LibGuides upon the Adoption of WCAG 2.0 Guidelines By Michael Chee and Kari D. Weaver. "…Currently, there is limited information examining the extent to which libraries comply within their web environments. This article adds to the literature through a case study of the web accessibility compliance of one academic library's research guides found in Springshare's LibGuides software platform and provides recommendations for changes needed at the author, organizational, and programmatic levels…" https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19322909.2021.1907267 'Person, Shoes, Tree. Is the Person Naked?' What People with Vision Impairments Want in Image Descriptions By Abigale Stangl, Meredith Ringel, and Danna Gurari. "…Our findings reveal how image description preferences vary based on the source where digital images are encountered and the surrounding context. We provide recommendations for the development of next-generation image description technologies inspired by our empirical analysis…" https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/person-shoes-tree-is-the-person-naked-what-people-with-vision-impairments-want-in-image-descriptions/ ITI Announces Free Training on Authoring and Reading ACRs/VPATs By Sheri Byrne-Haber. "This training will quickly teach you how to produce and consume essential documentation on product accessibility…" https://sheribyrnehaber.medium.com/iti-announces-free-training-on-authoring-and-reading-acrs-vpats-354a9d241a23 Narrow Winn-Dixie Court Opinion Limits Certain Types of Web Accessibility Lawsuits in three U.S. States By Lainey Feingold. "…This court is the only one in the country to have such a narrow view of the ADA. This opinion ignores the civil rights of disabled people but it should not stop site owners from building websites that work for everyone…" https://www.lflegal.com/2021/04/winn-dixie-appeal/ Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida (PDF) By United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/201713467.pdf 11th Circuit Reverses Winn-Dixie- What It Means to You By Ken Nakata. "…the Eleventh Circuit…has made it virtually impossible to bring a web accessibility case unless that website somehow prevented a person with a disability from being able to obtain the goods and services of a place of public accommodation…" https://convergeaccessibility.com/2021/04/07/11th-circuit-reverses-winn-dixie/ Websites Not Bound by ADA Accessibility Rules, 11th Circuit Finds By Kayla Goggin. "The ruling vacates a federal judge's decision that the Winn-Dixie supermarket chain's website violated the Americans With Disabilities Act by being inaccessible to visually impaired people who use screen-reader software…" https://www.courthousenews.com/websites-not-bound-by-ada-accessibility-rules-11th-circuit-finds/ Eleventh Circuit Says Winn Dixie's Inaccessible Website Does Not Violate The ADA By Seyfarth Shaw LLP. "The Eleventh Circuit's much-anticipated decision in Gil v. Winn Dixie sets a higher bar for plaintiffs in website accessibility lawsuits and creates a conflict among judicial circuits that could result in Supreme Court review…" https://www.adatitleiii.com/2021/04/eleventh-circuit-says-winn-dixies-inaccessible-website-does-not-violate-the-ada/ The Eleventh Circuit Finally Breaks Its Silence on Website Accessibility - but Was Its Decision Worth the Wait? By Joshua A. Stein. "After keeping us waiting with baited breath for several years, the Eleventh Circuit finally broke its silence - issuing its long-anticipated ruling in Gil v. Winn-Dixie Stores, holding that websites are not covered as places of public accommodation under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act ('Title III' or 'ADA')…" https://www.natlawreview.com/article/eleventh-circuit-finally-breaks-its-silence-website-accessibility-was-its-decision Winn-Dixie Wins Legal Suit, Maybe Shoots Self in Foot By Drew Sorrell. "…I am not sure that a business fighting a visually impaired person over that persons admitted inability to use its website is necessarily the right marketing image in 2021. You be the judge." https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/winn-dixie-wins-legal-suit-maybe-shoots-7401830/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS is a Strongly Typed Language By Eric Bailey. "One of the ways you can classify a programming language is by how strongly or weakly typed it is. Here, 'typed' means if variables are known at compile time…" https://css-tricks.com/css-is-a-strongly-typed-language/ Modern CSS Upgrades To Improve Accessibility By Stephanie Eckles. "Accessibility is a critical skill for developers doing work at any point in the stack. For front-end tasks, modern CSS provides capabilities we can leverage to make layouts more accessibly inclusive for users of all abilities across any device…" https://moderncss.dev/modern-css-upgrades-to-improve-accessibility/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. 7 Reasons Survey Questions Are Answered Incorrectly By Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis. "…People may answer survey questions incorrectly for a variety of reasons… 1. Failure to encode a memory… 2. Forgetting… 3. Misinterpreting the Question… 4. Flawed Judgment or Poor Estimation… 5. Answer Formatting… 6. Dishonesty… 7. Not Following Instructions…" https://measuringu.com/incorrect-survey-answers/ Usability Testing for Content (Video) By Kate Moran. "Usability testing can yield valuable insights about your content. Make sure you test with the correct users, carefully craft the tasks, and ask the right follow-up questions." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/usability-testing-content/ +04: EVENTS. How Testing Your Documents Can Improve Plain Language Compliance with Dr. Ginny Redish April 14, 2021. Online https://digital.gov/event/2021/04/14/how-testing-your-documents-can-improve-plain-language-compliance/ Accessibility - Lightning Talks April 19, 2021. Online https://triuxpa.org/event-4264789 Accessible Color Contrast with John B. Northrup from WebAIM April 19, 2021. Online https://www.meetup.com/WordPress-San-Fernando-Valley-Meetup/events/277408869/ Making a COVID-19 Site Accessible: From Tweet to Action - Jill Wolters (A11yTalks - April 2021) April 22, 2021. Online https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jox8utEyUQ0 Web Directions Hover April 23 & 30, 2021. Online https://webdirections.org/hover/ The National Federation of the Blind National Convention July 6-10, 2021. Online https://www.nfb.org/get-involved/national-convention WAS Series: Basic Accessibility Testing Methods and Tools July 8, 2021. Online https://www.meetup.com/A11YPrinceton/events/275686204/ Fundamental Concepts Underpinning Accessibility Advice July 20, 2021. Online https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/content.asp?admin=Y&contentid=753 WAS Series: Accessibility Testing with Screen Readers July 22, 2021. Online https://www.meetup.com/A11YPrinceton/events/275686218/ +05: HTML. Let Your Headings do the Hard Work By Andrew Duckworth. "The most common improvement I tell teams to make is to tell the user what they need to do in the h1…" https://grillopress.github.io/2020/07/02/let-your-headings-do-the-hard-work.html Pleased to see @bing using
in its Search results By Steve Faulkner. "At @Google its
's all the way, with role=main etc…" https://twitter.com/stevefaulkner/status/1381201881872076808 30 Days of HTML Day 13: and By Erika Lee and Jen Kramer. "Today, we're all about the documentation - what happens when someone runs your code? What do they press on the keyboard or say via voice interface, and what is the output?…" https://jen4web.substack.com/p/kbd +06: MISCELLANEOUS. The Layers of the Web (Video) By Jeremy Keith. "Together we'll uncover how to build resilient, performant, accessible and beautiful structures that work with the grain of the materials of the World Wide Web…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96DCTASFniI 28 Goof-Ups That Can Derail Your Design Sprint By Parallel. "Here are lessons from the trenches after running 50+ Design Sprints and learning from one goof-up at a time…" https://www.parallelhq.com/design-sprint-goofups +07: NAVIGATION. Journey Mapping in the New Normal: Part 3 By Diana Glozman. "…This final article in the series will focus on the application of the journey map findings and journey map maintenance…" https://www.uxbooth.com/articles/journey-mapping-in-the-new-normal-part-3/ +08: USABILITY. Content is Critical (Part 1) By Gerry McGovern. "'…Traffic is a vanity metric. Don't do it.' The metrics drive the behaviors. The organizations that chase traffic chase garbage. It's the Cult of Volume. And in a pandemic, what good is volume? 'Oh! Look! Our traffic has exploded!' says the Web manager for a government health website. What are they going to do for traffic after the pandemic? How in any sane or logical world is traffic a good metric for a government health website?" https://gerrymcgovern.com/content-is-critical-part-1/ The Current State of Mobile UX (18 Common Pitfalls) By Edward Scott. "…In this article we'll analyze this dataset to provide you with the current state of mobile UX, and outline 18 common design pitfalls and strategic oversights applicable to most mobile e-commerce sites…" https://baymard.com/blog/2021-current-state-mobile-ecommerce Design Systems 101 By Therese Fessenden. "A design system is a set of standards to manage design at scale by reducing redundancy while creating a shared language and visual consistency across different pages and channels." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-systems-101/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +09: 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.]