+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 21, Issue 29, January 11, 2023. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 29 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: NAVIGATION. 09: TOOLS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 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. A Beginner's Guide to Link and Text Accessibility By Whitney Lewis. "Learn how to avoid common link and text accessibility errors. Plus, best practices for links and text readability that will help make your content more accessible…" https://blog.pope.tech/2023/01/01/link-and-text-accessibility/ WCAG 2.1 Primer Alpha By GOV.UK. "This document will help you get up to speed with WCAG 2.1 quickly and avoid common mistakes people make when creating or updating web content. You will find this really helpful if you design, build or create web content…" https://alphagov.github.io/wcag-primer/ Non-breaking spaces (' ') in runs of text… By Adrian Roselli. "…are one of the most common reasons I see for a page failing 1.4.12 Text Spacing. It means text will not wrap as the spacing expands. WYSIWYG authors often miss these and CMSes do a poor job flagging/replacing them." https://mastodon.social/@aardrian@toot.cafe/109627194197770209 AI-Generated Images from AI-Generated Prompts By Adrian Roselli. "…Building on my post AI-Generated Images from AI-Generated Alt Text, I am going to demonstrate the saddest, newest trend in generating alternative text for images - AI tools that use existing images to generate text prompts for AI-powered image generators…" https://adrianroselli.com/2023/01/ai-generated-images-from-ai-generated-prompts.html Five Myths About Digital Accessibility (Video) By Crystal Preston-Watson. "…A significant reason technology remains inaccessible to disabled people is the misconceptions and preconceived assumptions towards accessibility that reign in companies that build the technology. Today, we're bringing the ugliness inside of inaccessible digital technology out into the open. You'll be presented with five of the most widespread myths about accessibility…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDZdCYhQAwU A New Accessibility Strategy for The GOV.UK Design System By David Cox and Claire Ashworth. "The GOV.UK Design System team has a lot of work coming up that relates to web accessibility. To help coordinate this work, we created an accessibility strategy…" https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2023/01/06/a-new-accessibility-strategy-for-the-gov-uk-design-system/ User Needs for People With Learning and Cognitive Disabilities - Logging in and Authentication with Shawn Thompson (Video) By Lisa Seeman. "This video is the first in a series talking about user needs for people with learning and cognitive disabilities. This video talks about passwords and two factor authentication. We discuss why they are not usable by everyone, and alternative solutions that are just as secure." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_ARC6QZLPE WAI-Adapt Explainer Lisa Seeman, Charles LaPierre, John Foliot, Michael Cooper, Ruoxi Ran, and Richard Schwerdtfeger Editors. "The various WAI-Adapt specification modules described in this Explainer provide various means for web technologies to address these requirements…" https://www.w3.org/TR/adapt/ WAI-Adapt: Symbols Module Lisa Seeman, Charles LaPierre, John Foliot, Michael Cooper, Ruoxi Ran, and Richard Schwerdtfeger Editors. "This specification provides web content authors a standard approach to support web users with various cognitive and learning disabilities who: * Customarily communicate using symbolic languages generally known as Augmentative and Alternative Communications (AAC); * Need more familiar icons (and other graphical symbols) in order to comprehend page content…" https://www.w3.org/TR/adapt-symbols/ Q&A with Lainey Feingold: Digital Accessibility Legal Update By 3Play Media. "A lot happened in the digital accessibility legal space in 2022! Have you kept up?…" https://www.3playmedia.com/blog/lainey-feingolds-annual-digital-accessibility-legal-update/ Inclusive Web Design Checklist By Heydon Pickering. "Aims to be the biggest checklist of inclusive design considerations for the web ever. Includes items for accessibility, performance, device support, interoperability, and language…" https://github.com/Heydon/inclusive-design-checklist Legal Update: December 2022 By Ken Nakata. "Happy New Year! Looking back over 2022, I'd say that, while district courts in some circuits (i.e. the Third Circuit and Second Circuit) continue bickering over whether the nexus requirement makes any sense in web accessibility cases, most of the law around web accessibility has been fairly settled…" https://convergeaccessibility.com/2023/01/03/legal-update-december-2022/ Deja Vu All Over Again? DOJ Announces Intent to Adopt Web Accessibility Regulations for State and Local Governments (Update) By Lainey Feingold. "…In early January 2023 the US Department of Justice published its Unified Agenda for Fall 2022…" https://www.lflegal.com/2022/08/doj-web-regs-announce/#article-updates +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. !important By Estelle Weyl. "A ! delimiter followed by the important keyword marks the declaration as important. The !important flag alters the rules selecting declarations inside the cascade. A declaration that is not important is called normal…" https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/important Day 74: Using !important in Cascade Layers By Manuel Matuzović. "…In order to understand how !important works in cascade layers, you have to understand how !important works generally. The conclusion of this post might not be what you expect…" https://www.matuzo.at/blog/2023/100daysof-day74/ Conditional CSS By Ahmed Shadeed. "I like to think of CSS as a conditional design language…" https://ishadeed.com/article/conditional-css/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Personas Are Living Documents: Design Them to Evolve By Matt Brown. "We sometimes think of personas as final artifacts, when, in reality, personas are merely a representation of data, and data can change. An artifact that is too polished or difficult to update may result in an outdated and unused persona." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/personas-are-living-documents/ How to Use the Finite Population Correction By Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis. "What is the impact if you sample a lot of your population in a survey?…" https://measuringu.com/finite-population-correction/ Component Library Accessibility Audit By Rachele DiTullio. "…Testing a component library is challenging when it presents placeholder content without surrounding content for context. Testing the structure of a component is good for catching ARIA and resize issues but has limited value in ensuring the resulting website is accessible. Remember to test a representative sample of pages from your website that uses each of the library components with real content. What matters is how accessible your final content is" https://racheleditullio.com/blog/2023/01/component-library-accessibility-audit/ +04: EVENTS. Inclusion Through Listening with Indi Young January 19, 2023. Online https://www.torchi.org/event-5059963 A Beginner's Guide to Inclusive UX Design with David Sloan and David Swallow January 31, 2023. Online https://www.tpgi.com/webinar-january-31-at-12pm-et-a-beginners-guide-to-inclusive-ux-design/ AccessU (Correction from last week. Hat tip to Meryl Evans) May 9-12, 2023. (Not May 1-5) Online and Austin, Texas, U.S.A https://events.humanitix.com/john-slatin-accessu-2023-powered-by-knowbility HalfStack Phoenix Phoenix, Arizona, U.S.A. February 3, 2023. https://halfstackconf.com/phoenix/ Virtual Web Accessibility Training March 7-8, 2023. Online https://webaim.org/training/virtual/ Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services (SIGUCCS) Conference March 26-29, 2023. Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. https://siguccs.org/Conference/2023/ +05: HTML. HTML With Superpowers: The Guidebook By Dave Rupert. "A free introduction to Web Components resource…" https://daverupert.com/2023/01/html-with-superpowers-the-guidebook/ How to Build Great HTML Form Controls By Austin Gil. "Today I'm going to show you all the things to consider when building the perfect HTML input. Despite its seemingly simple nature, there's actually a lot that goes into it…" https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/perfect-html-input/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Merging Arrays and Objects With Vanilla JavaScript By Chris Ferdinandi. "Yesterday, we looked at how to create a unique copy of an array or object. Today, we're going to talk about how to merge multiple arrays or objects together…" https://gomakethings.com/merging-arrays-and-objects-with-vanilla-javascript/ Common ARIA Mistakes and How to Avoid Them By Alexander Lehner. @alex86@tech.lgbt "So you want to make your website more accessible? Great! And you've heard about ARIA, which stands for Accessible Rich Internet Applications. Just slap some ARIA attributes on all HTML elements and your page is accessible? Wrong…" https://www.oidaisdes.org/common-aria-mistakes.en/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. What Does It Look Like for the Web to Lose? By Chris Coyier. "…Better yet, let's ditch the idea of native apps. All web! All web! All web!…" https://chriscoyier.net/2023/01/04/what-does-it-look-like-for-the-web-to-lose/ Progressively-Enhanced Dark Mode By Darin Senneff. "Recently, I added a dark mode setting to my website. Dark mode is a color theme feature that's pretty common these days. Letting users adjust the color of content so it's easier to see is a nice usability improvement…" https://www.darins.page/articles/progressively-enhanced-dark-mode Will ChatGPT Threaten the Future of the Digital Accessibility Field? By Denis Boudreau. "…In this post, we will explore the potential risks and benefits of using natural language processing models like ChatGPT in the field of digital accessibility, and offer guidance for aspiring professionals on how to use these tools responsibly and effectively…" https://inklusiv.ca/will-chatgpt-threaten-the-future-of-the-digital-accessibility-field/ Stock Photos of People With Disabilities By Dennis E. Lembrée. "Slightly off topic, but if you're seeking a stock photo including people with a disability, here is a list of resources…" https://www.webaxe.org/stock-photos-people-with-disabilities/ +08: NAVIGATION. How Practitioners Create Journey Maps: Typical Uses, Roles, and Methods By Kate Kaplan. "Data from 343 companies provide a baseline to understanding typical approaches for selecting journey-mapping applications, research methods, contributing roles, and map components." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/journey-mapping-how/ +09: TOOLS. JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver Braille Viewers By Adrian Roselli. "First, a very important qualifier - this does not represent how Braille display users experience the web. All this post does is show how to enable the Braille display emulators in JAWS and VoiceOver. This can be handy when testing issues reported by users and you do not have a Braille display handy, though this is really only handy for sighted readers. In no way is this post meant to suggest you can replace Braille display testing with these emulators… " https://adrianroselli.com/2023/01/jaws-nvda-and-voiceover-braille-viewers.html +10: TYPOGRAPHY. Hats Off to ALL CAPS By Andrew Somers. "Another in our series, myth-busting the misunderstandings regarding accessibility: are dyslexia fonts useful and the shift in using ALL UPPERCASE LETTERS for various text elements…" https://tangledweb.xyz/hats-off-to-all-caps-c0a43a2c30d4 +11: USABILITY. This is Too Easy to Understand (UX Slogan #17) (Video) By Kate Moran. "User interfaces can definitely be too hard to use, but can they be too easy? No, users never complain about an easy design, even if they would have been able to use something more difficult." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/too-easy/ Infinite Scrolling: When to Use It, When to Avoid It (Video) By Tim Neusesser. "Infinite scrolling through long lists of homogeneous items can lower interaction costs, but is less suited to support specific tasks such as finding a particular item." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/infinite-scrolling-when/ 7 Purpose-Driven UX Tips for Your Next Web-Site Redesign By Arpith Arun. "All too often, redesigns focus on extravagant visual elements and flashy copy-completely ignoring how users would ultimately interact with the Web site…" https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2023/01/7-purpose-driven-ux-tips-for-your-next-web-site-redesign.php 7 Principles of Design Psychology Every UX Designer Should Know By Jenna Bunnell. "UX design is not just about making things look good…" https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2023/01/7-principles-of-design-psychology-every-ux-designer-should-know.php +12: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. Digital Degrowth: Toward Radically Sustainable Education Technology By Neil Selwyn. "This paper starts from the simple premise that education technology needs to be reimagined along radically different lines - i.e. toward forms of digital technology use that are more humane and sustainable, that strive to be genuinely nourishing, generative and empowering for all, as well as avoiding harmful impacts on the planet's environment and ecosystems…" https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/journal_contribution/Digital_degrowth_toward_radically_sustainable_education_technology/21809565/1 An Interview with AI on the Social and Environmental Impacts of AI By Tom Greenwood. "…I am increasingly being asked to comment on whether AI will be good or bad for people and planet. A tool from Open AI called ChatGPT has recently gained widespread attention as they opened up their beta to the general public. Having tested it myself and been blown away by it's answers to my initial questions, I wondered what its perspective might be on the social and environmental impacts of the Internet and AI. Who better to ask than an AI itself?…" https://www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/social-environmental-impacts-of-ai/ Keeping All Data Is No Longer an Option  By Gerry McGovern. "Data production is growing at around 25% per year…" https://gerrymcgovern.com/keeping-all-data-is-no-longer-an-option/ [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.]