+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 21, Issue 19, November 1, 2022. 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: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 03: DRUPAL. 04: EVENTS. 05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 06: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: TOOLS. 09: TYPOGRAPHY. 10: USABILITY. 11: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. SECTION TWO: 12: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Cognitive Overlords (Video) By Alex Tait. "Interfaces are doing too much - we've gone from cognitive overload to cognitive overlords…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcK0ZtWQQQg Accessibility Beyond the 'Obvious' By Martin Underhill. "…Accessibility goes way beyond practical input and output; most of the problems I encountered here amplified an already stressful situation, when what was really needed was simplicity and clarity." https://www.tempertemper.net/blog/accessibility-beyond-the-obvious Complexity and Caution By Martin Underhill. "…Introducing complexity of any kind should always be done with caution. We might benefit a majority of users, but if we're making life difficult for the rest it's the wrong thing to do." https://www.tempertemper.net/blog/complexity-and-caution My Experiences With Inaccessible Job Applications & How to Fix Them By Justin Yarbrough. "…I am going to share stories of issues I have faced applying for jobs and discuss how employers can work to avoid creating issues like these for their applicants…" https://www.deque.com/blog/my-experiences-with-inaccessible-job-applications-how-to-fix-them/ What is an SCC File? By Jena Wallace. "…The consistency and versatility of SCC files makes them one of the top choices of closed captioners, broadcast networks, streaming platforms, and people looking for a caption file that will work across a variety of video destinations…" https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/what-is-an-scc-file/ Digital Accessibility - Ask Me Anything (AMA) (Video) By Mark Miller and Matthew Atkinson. "During this AMA session, Mark Miller and Matthew Atkinson talk about digital accessibility. Why accessibility programs succeed and why some may fail." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i9kxrnVkSM 5 Visual Treatments that Improve Accessibility By Kelley Gordon. "To design accessible visuals, account for color contrast, don't rely on color alone, make interactive elements easy to identify, provide useful alternative text for images, and test your visuals with real users." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/visual-treatments-accessibility/ How Traits of Successful Communities Can Inform Our Accessibility Initiatives By WebAIM. "When you consider the word "community", what comes to mind?…" https://webaim.org/articles/communities/ Co-Designing Systems to Support Blind and Low Vision Audio Description Writers By Jiang et al. "…This work expands on existing literature regarding audio description and explores best practices for expanding access to AD writing…" https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3517428.3550394 Grid-Coding: An Accessible, Efficient, and Structured Coding Paradigm for Blind and Low-Vision Programmers By Ehtesham-Ul-Haque et al. "Sighted programmers often rely on visual cues (e.g., syntax coloring, keyword highlighting, code formatting) to perform common coding activities in text-based languages (e.g., Python). Unfortunately, blind and low-vision (BLV) programmers hardly benefit from these visual cues because they interact with computers via assistive technologies (e.g., screen readers), which fail to communicate visual semantics meaningfully. Prior work on making text-based programming languages and environments accessible mostly focused on code navigation and, to some extent, code debugging, but not much toward code editing, which is an essential coding activity…" https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/3526113.3545620 Accessibility in the Fediverse (and Mastodon) By Eric Eggert. "Many people think about moving or at least establishing a presence in the so-called Fediverse…" https://yatil.net/blog/accessibility-in-the-fediverse-and-mastodon 2022 State of Digital Accessibility (PDF) By Level Access. "…The 2022 report draws on the data gathered in the State of Digital Accessibility survey to provide insights into overall trends in the industry and the digital accessibility programs of organizations large and small…" https://www.levelaccess.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/2022-State-of-Digital-Accessibility-Report.pdf Update: Lawsuits by the Numbers (Video) By Jack McElaney. "…Just in the last week, Harvard University, Brown University, they got lawsuits, Colgate University. And then, throughout the last 6 months, Whole Foods, Procter and Gamble, Brookstone, Benihaha, Morgan Stanley, R.E.I., and the list continues to go on…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q1x34XQxT0 +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS is Awesome (Video) By Chris Ferdinandi. "Last week, my friend Anton Gunnarsson gave a lightning talk at Nordic.js called CSS *is* awesome.…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uo3px1L3H70 Is There Too Much CSS Now? By Sacha Greif. "…now that we got all we wished for and more, some of us are asking - do we now have too much CSS?…" https://css-tricks.com/is-there-too-much-css-now/ The New CSS Media Query Range Syntax By Preethi Selvam. "We rely on CSS Media Queries for selecting and styling elements based on a targeted condition…" https://css-tricks.com/the-new-css-media-query-range-syntax/ +03: COLOR. Getting WCAG Color Contrast Right By Lukas Oppermann. "Actionable tips on how to nail WCAG 2.1 color compliance." https://uxdesign.cc/getting-the-wcag-color-contrast-right-799508389679?gi=157f0aafd111 +04: EVENTS. Live Subtitles in Augmented Reality Glasses November 8, 2022. Online https://www.meetup.com/a11yvr/events/289210829/ Code Leaders 2022 November 30, 2022. Sydney, Australia https://webdirections.org/leaders/index.php ACM SIGUCCS 2023 Annual Conference March 26-29, 2023. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. https://siguccs.org/Conference/2023/ Information Architecture Conference March 28-April 1, 2023. New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A. https://www.theiaconference.com/ On Line Consortium Innovate April 18-21, 2023. Nashville, Tennessee, U.S.A. https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/attend-2023/innovate/ The Web Conf 2023 April 30-May 4, 2023. Austin Texas, U.S.A. https://www2023.thewebconf.org/ +05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. A First Glimpse at Wireframing, the Book! By Leon Barnard. "… we want to show you a few of the images we'll be using in the book and give you a preview of one of the topics…" https://balsamiq.com/company/news/first-glimpse-wireframing-book/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. ARIA 101 with Nicolas Steenhout (Video) By Nicolas Steenhout. "In this JS Drop, accessibility expert Nicolas Steenhout will introduce you to the W3C Accessibility Spec, ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications). You will learn about when to use ARIA (hint: it's not always the best option), some basic rules of ARIA, and some examples of ARIA in action…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPseLCVlM3s aria-label is a Code Smell By Eric Bailey. "The aria-label property is made available to us by the Accessible Rich Internet Applications (ARIA) standard. It allows a property/value declaration in HTML as a way of providing an accessible name for an interactive element…" https://ericwbailey.website/published/aria-label-is-a-code-smell/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. Design Principles For The Web (Video) By Jeremy Keith. "Designing and developing on the web can feel like a never-ending crusade against the unknown. Design principles are one way of unifying your team to better fight this battle. But as well as the design principles specific to your product or service, there are core principles underpinning the very fabric of the World Wide Web itself. Together, we'll dive into applying these design principles to build websites that are resilient, performant, accessible, and beautiful…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q03gUCB690 Accessibility Skills Gap Survey By Teach Access. "Teach Access is creating a new Accessibility Skills Gap Report and we need your help…" https://teachaccess.org/accessibility-skills-gap/ +08: TOOLS. Axe-core 4.5: First WCAG 2.2 Support and More By Wilco Fiers. "…Some of axe-core 4.5.0's notable features include: A new WCAG 2.2 rule to test for a minimum size of touch targets…" https://www.deque.com/blog/axe-core-4-5-first-wcag-2-2-support-and-more/ +09: TYPOGRAPHY. Typographic Hierarchies By Alma Hoffmann. "In this article, Alma Hoffmann discusses six basic variables to establish a typographic hierarchy, explains how to look at each differently, and in turn, designs pieces by intentionally modifying each variable to create a typographic hierarchy effectively…" https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2022/10/typographic-hierarchies/ +10: USABILITY. Hostile Patterns in Error Messages By Kate Kaplan. "Premature error messages, aggressively styled fields, and unnecessarily disruptive system-status messages feel bad-mannered and increase cognitive load for users during otherwise simple tasks." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/hostile-error-messages/ The Gestalt Principles for User Interface Design (Video) By Maria Rosala. "The gestalt principles for visual perception make users see some graphical user interface design elements as parts of a whole, and others as being separate, and thus different." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/the-gestalt-principles-intro/ 3 Strategies for Managing Visual Complexity in Applications and Websites (Video) By Raluca Budiu. "In application design, prevent users from being overwhelmed by putting things in predictable places, using a clear visual hierarchy, and taking advantage of progressive disclosure." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/managing-visual-complexity/ You Are Not Your User (Video) By Microsoft Accessibility. "This video discusses the importance of including people with disabilities from the beginning of every project, and why this is important for the accessible and usable outcome of your product or service." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6QwiJM_TUo How Atomic Design Found Brad Frost By Brian Hanley. "8 years after Brad Frost discovered atomic design, we at R/GA still leverage it on countless projects. But how did it all start? Where did atomic design come from? How did it find Brad Frost?…" https://www.uxbooth.com/articles/how-atomic-design-found-brad-frost/ +11: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. UCI Study Finds 53 Percent Jump in E-Waste Greenhouse Gas Emissions Between 2014, 2020 By University of California Irvine. "Researchers urge extension of electronic devices' useful life to cut carbon dioxide creation…" https://news.uci.edu/2022/10/26/uci-study-finds-53-percent-jump-in-e-waste-greenhouse-gas-emissions-between-2014-2020/ Heavy Websites Are a Tax on Poor and Environment By Gerry McGovern. "…Digital has massive and growing costs to the environment. It's time we stopped pretending otherwise" https://gerrymcgovern.com/heavy-websites-are-a-tax-on-poor-and-environment/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +12: 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.]