+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 21, Issue 08, August 16, 2022. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 08 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: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: TOOLS. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 17: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. WCAG 2.2 CR Candidate First Look (Video) By Eric Eggert. "I'm looking at the first candidate to go into Candidate Recommendation phase…" The talks starts about 4 minutes 47 seconds into the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_qYCV0WSRs?t=04m47s Accessibility is Writing By Ian Demsky. "Why do I say that 'accessibility is writing'? First, it ensures equal access to your content for anyone who wants or needs to interact with it. Second, it provides a better experience for all users, whether or not they're using assistive technologies, such as a screen reader or mobile accessibility features…" https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/accessibility-writing-ian-demsky/ What is WAI? The Web Accessibility Initiative By Ilknur Eren. "The Web Accessibility Initiative is W3C's effort to improve accessibility of the Web for people with disabilities…" https://www.a11yproject.com/posts/what-is-wai/ Making Accessible DocuSign Forms By Bruce Lawson. "…All in all, it's a good product, let down by poor usability and a 'bolt-on' approach. And, as we all know, built-in beats bolt-on. Bigly." https://brucelawson.co.uk/2022/making-accessible-docusign-forms/ Reflow: Automatically Improving Touch Interactions in Mobile Applications through Pixel-based Refinements (PDF) By Jason Wu et al. "Touch is the primary way that users interact with smartphones. However, building mobile user interfaces where touch interactions work well for all users is a difficult problem, because users have different abilities and preferences. We propose a system, Reflow…" https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jbigham/pubs/pdfs/2022/reflow.pdf FTC, Commercial Surveillance, and Overlays By Adrian Roselli. "…accessibility overlay vendors are stewards of a great deal of personal information from users. Users who may not understand they have given up that information. Information that can be valuable to data brokers. Even if the best actors in the space have a good privacy policy, that privacy policy is moot in the face of a data breach…" https://adrianroselli.com/2022/08/ftc-commercial-surveillance-and-overlays.html Automation and Accessibility - What You Need To Know (Video) By Crystal Preston-Watson. "This video discusses some issues and concerns testing teams must consider before automating accessibility tests…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFC0cLza1qk Bringing Together Keyboard-only and Click-based UI Tests with keyboard-testing-library By Grunet. "As covered in Marcy Sutton's Testing Accessibility workshops, it's impactful to write UI tests from the perspective of users who only use the keyboard…" https://testingaccessibility.com/introducing-keyboard-testing-library-by-grunet Key Takeaways from UsableNet's 2022 Mid-Year ADA Web and App Report By Samantha Sauld. "…In this blog post, we'll cover the key takeaways from UsableNet's mid-year report and what you should keep in mind for the year ahead…" https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/key-takeaways-usablenets-ada-web-app-report/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Recreating 'The Effects of Nuclear Weapons' for the Web By Eric A. Meyer. "In my previous post, I wrote about a way to center elements based on their content, without forcing the element to be a specific width, while preserving the interior text alignment. In this post, I'd like to talk about why I developed that technique…" https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2022/08/09/recreating-the-effects-of-nuclear-weapons-for-the-web/ Table Column Alignment with Variable Transforms By Eric A. Meyer. "One of the bigger challenges of recreating The Effects of Nuclear Weapons for the Web was its tables…" https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2022/08/15/table-column-alignment-with-variable-transforms/ Is CSS an Object-Oriented Programming Language? By Álvaro Montoro. "…Is CSS an object-oriented programming language? The answer is 'No.' Even if it fulfilled the main concepts of OOP (which are exaggerated and stretched for comic purposes), that wouldn't make it an object-oriented programming language. But that doesn't matter because being OOP or not being OOP doesn't make CSS (or any other language) a lesser language. It is beautiful, useful, and incredible as it is (and will keep being.)…" https://alvaromontoro.com/blog/68011/is-css-an-object-oriented-programming-language +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Takeaways from Rapid UX Research to Empower Your Teams By Deborah Edwards-Oñoro. "In her 'Rapid UX Research to Empower Your Teams' presentation for UX Research & Strategy this week, Amanda Gelb shared her journey as the first researcher at the New York City office for Lyft…" https://www.lireo.com/takeaways-from-rapid-ux-research-to-empower-your-teams/ How to Build a Participant List for UX Workshops By Matt Brown. "Summary: A successful UX workshop includes a relatively small number of diverse participants and prioritizes users' needs." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/workshop-participant-lists/ +04: EVENTS. 2022 Federal Plain Language Summit August 24, 2022. Online https://digital.gov/event/2022/08/24/2022-federal-plain-language-summit/ Guide To Digital and Communication Accessibility in Higher Education August 25, 2022. Online https://go.3playmedia.com/wbnr-08-25-2022-edu UX Measurement Boot Camp 2022 September 19-23, 2022. Online https://measuringu.com/events/ux-measurement-bootcamp-2022/ An Event Apart San Francisco December 12-14, 2022. San Francisco, California, U.S.A. https://aneventapart.com/event/san-francisco-2022 +05: HTML. On Ratings and meters By Lea Verou. "I always thought that the semantically appropriate way to represent a rating (e.g. a star rating) is a element…" https://lea.verou.me/2022/08/on-ratings-and-meters/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Custom Events with Vanilla JS By Chris Ferdinandi. "JavaScript provides developers with a way to emit custom events that developers can listen for with the Element.addEventListener() method…" https://gomakethings.com/custom-events-with-vanilla-js/ Custom Event Naming Conventions By Chris Ferdinandi. "…This week, we looked at how to create custom events with vanilla JS, and a helper function to make things a bit easier. Today, we're going to look at different naming conventions for custom events…" https://gomakethings.com/custom-event-naming-conventions/ How and Why We Removed jQuery From GOV.UK By Andy Sellick. "…The main disadvantage of using jQuery is that it has to be included in the page assets, which can slow down how quickly a site loads…" https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2022/08/11/how-and-why-we-removed-jquery-from-gov-uk/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. IE: RIP or BRB? (Bruce Lawson keynote at FullStack eXchange 2022) (Video) By Bruce Lawson. "On June 15, 2022, after more than 25 years as one of the most used and most frequently derrided web browsers, Internet Explorer (IE) was officially retired by Microsoft. In this session, Bruce Lawson will comment on the end of IE, and reflect on where we're going with web standards and browser diversity." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWZX-zqBeRQ No, Large Language Models Aren't Like Disabled People (and it's problematic to argue that they are) By Emily M. Bender. "There's a tendency I've observed where people trying to argue that language models 'understand' language to draw analogies to the experience of disabled people (especially blind and Deafblind people). These analogies are both false and dehumanizing…" https://medium.com/@emilymenonbender/no-llms-arent-like-people-with-disabilities-and-it-s-problematic-to-argue-that-they-are-a2ac0df0e435 Announcing our Tom Hopkins Disability Access Award Winner! By Massachusetts Office on Disability. "…we're honored to present Sarah Bourne, former Director of IT Accessibility at the Commonwealth, with the Tom Hopkins Disability Access award…" https://myemail.constantcontact.com/Meet-Our-Tom-Hopkins-Disability-Access-Award-Winner.html?soid=1125772144705&aid=FQN2DbZ6f5c Front-end Internationalisation Tips By Nicola Saunders. "This article shares a few key front-end tips for internationalisation that I learned while working on the website rebuild for W3C…" https://www.studio24.net/blog/front-end-internationalisation-tips/ +08: TOOLS. Reveal Focus Order Bookmarklet By Ian Lloyd. "Finds all focusable elements and shows the actual tabbing order…" https://a11y-tools.com/bookmarklets/#revealfocusorder Cheat Codes for the Web - Browser Developer Tools for Non-Developers By Christian Heilmann. "Every browser these days comes with built-in developer tools that help people create, test and fix products for the web…" https://christianheilmann.com/2022/08/08/cheat-codes-for-the-web-browser-developer-tools-for-non-developers/ +09: TYPOGRAPHY. Designing for Long-Form Articles By Daniel Schwarz. "Designing a beautiful 'article' is wrought with tons of considerations…" https://css-tricks.com/designing-for-long-form-articles/ +10: USABILITY. How to Research Components and Patterns: Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them By Ignacia Orellana, Amy Hupe, and Caroline Jarrett. "In this post, we'll describe two challenges that we've encountered when doing research on the individual components and patterns in design systems and we'll suggest four ways of overcoming them…" https://www.effortmark.co.uk/how-to-research-components-and-patterns/ If You're Not Checking, You're Guessing (UX Slogan #11) (Video) By Sarah Gibbons. "Even the smallest amount of empirical findings about your target audience and their use of your UI will lead to vastly better design decisions than if you're designing without data. Because then you're just guessing." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/checking-guessing-ux-slogan/ Should Emojis be Used in E-Mail Subject Lines? (Video) By Kim Salazar. "We conducted user research to understand the impact of emojis in email subject lines. They can be useful once in a while, but should not be overused." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/emojis-email-subject-lines/ The Many Flaws of Big Data By Gerry McGovern. "…Quality content requires quality people. Ethical content requires ethical people. Well organized content requires well organized people. What technology has generally given us is huge capacities to create huge quantities of mainly low-value, often attention-grabbing content. What technology has also done well is understanding how to get us to click, understanding our most base and primitive instincts and exploiting them to the max…" https://gerrymcgovern.com/the-many-flaws-of-big-data/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +17: 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.]