+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 21, Issue 34, February 15, 2023. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 34 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: JAVASCRIPT. 07: MISCELLANEOUS. 08: PHP. 09: TOOLS. 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. Automated Testing Won't Solve Web Accessibility By Eric Eggert. "Over the past few years, accessibility companies have started to develop tools that claim to find accessibility problems automatically. Often the idea is that 'automated testing is not quite there yet, but in a few years there will be a revolution'. I don't believe that…" https://yatil.net/blog/automated-testing-wont-solve-web-accessibility The Troublesome Life and Lamentable Death of Success Criterion 4.1.1 By Christophe Strobbe. "…And that was the end of success criterion 4.1.1: born as a bastard child of XML, much maligned and misunderstood while alive, and eventually killed in ignominy…" https://medium.com/@christophe.strobbe/the-troublesome-life-and-lamentable-death-of-success-criterion-4-1-1-ebc57ce31191 Fast 5: Quick Tips to Make Your Course More Accessible (Video) By Lindsey Morris and Lindsay Foster. …In this webinar we will discuss the benefit of universal design for all learners, not just those who request accommodations. We will apply the universal design process to 5 areas in which content is frequently inaccessible, improving the online learning experience for all learners. Design principles are applicable for all online design, but we will utilize Canvas as our demo LMS…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=919MNYMsr0I Fast 5 Slides (PDF): https://dlss.flvc.org/documents/210036/1793828/February_7_2023_IDN_Webinar_PPT_Morris_and_Foster.pdf Automation is Not the Enemy By Karl Groves. "…While I currently cannot foresee a time when there's no longer a need for skilled manual testing and other skilled professionals throughout the design & development process, I do foresee a time that everyone's job becomes much easier and faster as a result of the advancement of tools. That's something we should all embrace." https://karlgroves.com/automation-is-not-the-enemy/ Neurodiversity Design System By Will Soward. "The NDS is a coherent set of standards and principles that combine neurodiversity and user experience design for Learning Management Systems. Design accessible learning interfaces supporting success and achievement for everyone…" https://neurodiversity.design/ Using ChatGPT to Make ChatGPT's Experience More Accessible By Joe Watkins. "…In this post you will see the back-and-forth between me and ChatGPT about its accessibility issue and witness it trying to fix itself. I will reduce some code fragments to make reading easier…" https://intopia.digital/articles/using-chatgpt-to-make-chatgpts-experience-more-accessible/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. 100 Days of More or Less Modern CSS (Video) By Manuel Matuzović. Manuel Matuzović completed his 100 day series that he started last September. "It's time to get me up to speed with modern CSS. There's so much new in CSS that I know too little about. To change that I've started #100DaysOfMoreOrLessModernCSS. Why more or less modern CSS? Because some topics will be about cutting-edge features, while other stuff has been around for quite a while already, but I just have little to no experience with it." https://www.matuzo.at/blog/2022/100-days-of-more-or-less-modern-css/ Working with Colour Scales for Data Visualisation in D3 By Michelle Barker. "There are many different ways of using colour informatively when it comes to data visualization. But we also need to ensure our use of colour conveys the right information, and that it is used accessibly. In this article we'll walk through some examples of using colour in different types of visualizations with the data visualization library D3.js. Some familiarity with D3 will be assumed, but there will be some helpful pointers regardless of how you create your visualizations…" https://css-irl.info/working-with-color-scales-for-data-visualisation-in-d3/ How to Write Semantic CSS (Video) By Kevin Powell. "Most people know about semantic HTML, but when it comes to CSS, things are a little more wishy-washy most of the time. Rather than relying on arbitrary class names, we can use different semantic selectors though…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWu5zf_S9R4 My CSS Wishlist By Ahmed Shadeed. "I like it when people share what they wish for CSS. In the last few weeks, I read two awesome wishlists by Dave Rupert and Eric Meyer. In 2022, we got many new CSS features, my favorite of them are container queries, CSS :has, and subgrid. I thought about brain-dumping all the things that I want CSS to have one day…" https://ishadeed.com/article/css-wishlist-2023/ My CSS Wishlist By Jens Oliver Meiert. Trim it. "…CSS is awesome, all the new features are fantastic, we're making classless web development an actual option, but CSS is sooo complex, it isn't only impossible that anyone could master it-it's also getting clear that more and more of it is ballast…" https://meiert.com/en/blog/my-css-wishlist/ +03: DRUPAL. Hands-On With Drupal 10: Crafting Content With CKEditor 5 By Kate Bundy. "Let's take a look at what you can expect from CKEditor 5 in Drupal and how to make the most of its core and premium features. …" https://evolvingweb.com/blog/hands-drupal-10-crafting-content-ckeditor-5 +04: EVALUATION & TESTING. When to Use Empathy Maps: 3 Options By Kate Kaplan. "Empathy maps are a powerful, flexible tool that can be used to plan for future research studies, capture insights during current user research, and communicate research insights from research that has already been conducted to others." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/using-empathy-maps/ Onboarding Tutorials vs. Contextual Help By Page Laubheimer. "Tutorials interrupt users, don't necessarily improve task performance, and are quickly forgotten. Contextual help signals can avoid these pitfalls but require unintrusive ways to activate." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/onboarding-tutorials/ In Search of a Tech-Savvy Measure for UX Research By Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis. "How do you measure tech savviness? Abstract constructs such as usability, trustworthiness, intelligence, and desirability can be difficult to measure. The same applies to tech savviness. But to paraphrase Potter Stewart, we know a tech-savvy person when we see one…" https://measuringu.com/in-search-of-tech-savvy-measures/ +05: EVENTS. Introduction to Web Accessibility February 13-June 30, 2023. Online. https://www.edx.org/course/web-accessibility-introduction Teach Access (Overview and Meet/Greet) February 15, 2023. Online https://www.meetup.com/atlanta-accessibility-meetup/events/289970546/ Accessibility Testing with NVDA Online February 15, 2023. https://equalizedigital.com/event/accessibility-testing-with-nvda/ Be A Digital Ally: Continued Exploration of WCAG 2.2 - Focus Appearance February 16, 2023. Online https://events.humanitix.com/be-a-digital-ally-continued-exploration-of-wcag-2-2 Accessibility Testing with VoiceOver February 23, 2023. Online https://equalizedigital.com/event/accessibility-testing-with-voiceover/ https://www.edx.org/course/web-accessibility-introduction San Diego Accessibility & Inclusive Design February Meetup February 23, 2023. San Diego, California, U.S.A. https://www.meetup.com/a11ysd/events/290430407/ How To Deliver an Accessible Online Presentation with Sheryl Burgstahler and Raja Kushalnagar February 23, 2023. Online https://go.3playmedia.com/wbnr-02-23-2023-accessible-presentation SmashingConf Freiburg September 4-6, 2023. Freiburg, Germany https://smashingconf.com/freiburg-2023/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. Foundations: Introduction to WAI-ARIA By Henny Swan. "The Web Accessibility Initiative Accessible Rich Internet Applications specification 1.2, or WAI-ARIA or ARIA for short, is a technical specification written by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In this post we explore what WAI-ARIA is, and how it can enhance the user experience for people using screen readers…" https://tetralogical.com/blog/2023/02/10/foundations-wai-aria/ Checking if Every Item an Array Matches Some Criteria With the Vanilla JS Array.prototype.every() Method By Chris Ferdinandi. "Today, we're going to learn how to check if every item an array matches some criteria…" https://gomakethings.com/checking-if-every-item-an-array-matches-some-criteria-with-the-vanilla-js-array.prototype.every-method/ Why I'm Not the Biggest Fan of Single Page Applications By Manuel Matuzović. "…the biggest criticism here is that it feels like people who believe in the superiority of single page applications and the entire ecosystem focus more on developer experience (DX) than user experience. That sounds like a dangerous blanket statement, but after all these years, I never had the feeling that the argument 'better DX leads to better UX' was ever true. It's nothing more than a justification for the immense complexity and potentially significantly worse UX. And even if the core argument isn't DX, other arguments like scalability, maintainability, competitive ability, easier recruiting ('everyone uses React'), and cost effectiveness, in my experience, only sound good, but rarely hold up to their promises…" https://www.matuzo.at/blog/2023/single-page-applications-criticism/ The Market for Lemons By Alex Russell. "…the worst actors still haven't levelled with their communities about what it takes to operate complex JS stacks at scale. They did not signpost the delicate balance of engineering constraints that allowed their products to adopt this new, slow, and complicated tech. Why? For the same reason used car dealers don't talk up average monthly repair costs…" https://infrequently.org/2023/02/the-market-for-lemons/ The Case for Frameworks By Laurie Voss. "Today I read Alex Russell's post The Market for Lemons and I found myself compelled to write a rebuttal…" https://seldo.com/posts/the_case_for_frameworks +07: MISCELLANEOUS. How to Be a Disability Ally By Meryl K. Evans. "One in four people has a disability in the U.S. Despite this high number, not everyone has met someone with a disability. At least, not that they know about. Even allies of disabled people don't always know how what to do. That's because everyone has different lived experiences and preferences. Here are ten ways to be a disability ally…" https://meryl.net/disability-ally/ 26 Additional Web Development Terms You May Not Have Heard Of By Jens Oliver Meiert. "Web Development has its own, special vocabulary that consists of several thousand terms. No one knows all of them. (Or do they?) After sharing 33 terms here, 33 terms there, another 25 terms over there, here are 26 more terms * you may or may not have heard of…" https://meiert.com/en/blog/26-web-development-terms/ Mansplaining in the run down shopping mall - hybrid search engines and chatGPT solutions will be an interesting challenge By Christian Heilmann. "The race to implement the functionality of ChatGPT into the traditional search interface is on with Microsoft barging ahead taking advantage of their OpenAI partnership and Google trying to fast follow with Bard…" https://christianheilmann.com/2023/02/09/mansplaining-in-the-run-down-shopping-mall-hybrid-search-engines-and-gpt-solutions-will-be-an-interesting-challenge/ Why We're Rebuilding The Thunderbird Interface From Scratch By Thunderbird Blog. "…A renewed attention to usability and accessibility is now part of our daily development process, guaranteeing easy discoverability of all the powerful features, as well as full compatibility with assistive technologies to make Thunderbird usable by everyone…" https://blog.thunderbird.net/2023/02/the-future-of-thunderbird-why-were-rebuilding-from-the-ground-up/ +08: PHP. Quick Tip: How To Check if a Variable is Set in PHP By Claudio Ribeiro. "In this PHP quick tip, we'll cover how to check whether or not variables are set, and if so, what their values are - which is a very common task in programming…" https://www.sitepoint.com/php-check-variable-set/ +09: TOOLS. clamp() calculator By Chris Burnell. "Handy little tool for calculating viewport-based clamped values." https://chrisburnell.com/clamp-calculator/ Screen Reader Quick Guide By Joel Holmberg. "Looking for a free quick guide, a 'cheat sheet' or a 'one pager' for screen reader testing? You've come to the right place" https://axesslab.com/screen-reader-quick-guide/ +10: USABILITY. Clarify, Don't Mystify (UX Slogan #19) (Video) By Jakob Nielsen. "UX design must make all elements of the interaction understandable and explicit. Mystifying things to entice more clicks from users will only result in dissatisfied customers." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/clarify-dont-mystify/ Building Trust in UX (Video) By Therese Fessenden, Sarah Gibbons, Kate Kaplan, and Anna Kaley. "Whether UX succeeds or fails comes down to whether other people in the organization trust the UX team, the UX process, and the UX findings and designs. Low trust = poor outcomes, no matter how good the work, so building trust is a priority." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/building-trust-ux/ +11: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. We Think of Information All Wrong By Gerry McGovern. "As the world is flooded with information and data, many have given up on the idea of organizing, editing or making sense of it all. We have instead become creators and hoarders…" https://gerrymcgovern.com/we-think-of-information-all-wrong/ How Apple & Big Tech Gutted New York's Right to Repair Bill By William Gallagher. "New York's toothless right to repair bill not only includes concessions to the demands of Big Tech firms, but text written by them…" https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/02/13/how-apple-big-tech-gutted-new-yorks-right-to-repair-bill [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.]