+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 21, Issue 50, June 7, 2023. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 50 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: SITES & BLOGS. 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. Assume the Position-A Labelling Story By Ian Lloyd. "…What I have come to learn, though, is that I have probably been more lenient in the past on some more questionable designs when I could have-and should have-hit them with the WCAG stick of conformance; a rap over the knuckles for not being clear and unambiguous." https://www.tpgi.com/assume-the-position-a-labelling-story/ How to Create Audio Descriptions for Accessible YouTube Videos By Whitney Lewis. "An audio description is narration that describes what's happening on-screen. They're important because users with visual and cognitive disabilities need the audio description to understand the visual content…" https://blog.pope.tech/2023/05/30/how-to-create-audio-descriptions-for-accessible-youtube-videos/ Designers and Developers Please Be Aware By Jon Avila. "…of how floating icons like back to top, chat, and widget bars seriously impact users with low vision who zoom in. Notice the impact when zoomed vs. no impact when not zoomed…" https://twitter.com/JonAvilaA11y/status/1664274138767425539 WCAG 2.2 AA: Summary and Checklist for Website Owners By Level Access. "This blog has been updated to reflect the most recent information from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)…" https://www.levelaccess.com/blog/wcag-22-aa-summary-and-checklist-for-website-owners WCAG 2.2 Misses Mark on Defining Visible Focus *Sigh* By Eric Eggert. "About two weeks ago, the WCAG WG released a new version of the Candidate Recommendation for WCAG 2.2." https://yatil.net/blog/wcag22-visible-focus The Road to Good Intentions is Paved with Hell: A Deep Dive into Accessibility APIs, By Neill Hadder. "This post is the second in a three-part series about how screen readers obtain what users need from applications and operating systems…" https://knowbility.org/blog/2023/accessibility-apis-part-2 PDF Accessibility (Updated) By WebAIM. "WebAIM's PDF Accessibility article has been updated and significantly expanded." https://webaim.org/techniques/acrobat/ Guides By Adam Liptrot. "A series of hands‐on guides to assistive technology and accessibility testing." https://liptrot.org/guides/ Dialog Dilemmas and Modal Mischief: A 7 Min Run Through of How to Build Dialogs and Popovers (Slides) By Hidde de Vries. Hidde's June 2023 presentation slides from JSNation in Amsterdam, Netherlands are available. https://talks.hiddedevries.nl/G9mATs/slides Busting Myths: Separating Fact from Fiction in Accessible Interactive Elements By Fahad Lambate. "I have always come across a question - be it from my team or the clients. How can I make this interactive element accessible?…" https://www.barrierbreak.com/busting-myths-separating-fact-from-fiction-in-accessible-interactive-elements/ The WebAIM Strategic Accessibility Framework By WebAIM. "This comprehensive framework for implementing accessibility throughout an organization now includes expanded documentation and resources…" https://webaim.org/articles/strategicframework/ Experience the Web as Personas With Access Needs By Government Digital Service. "The GDS Accessibility team has created 7 different accessibility personas. Each persona has different access needs. They are…" https://alphagov.github.io/accessibility-personas/ Why Members of the Disability Community Must Support Each Other By Rachael Montgomery. "…As an overarching community of people with disabilities, caretakers, allies, and advocates we need to do better in supporting each other. We need to put in the work to make our products, websites, content, etc. accessible…" https://whollyaccessible.org/2023/06/05/why-members-of-the-disability-community-must-support-each-other/ Accessibility Audits for All By Jeremy Keith. "…I recently did an internal audit of the Clearleft website. After writing up the report, I also did a lunch'n'learn to share my methodology. I wanted to show that there's some low-hanging fruit that pretty much anyone can catch…" https://adactio.com/journal/20212 Accessibility Audit Process By Maxability. "Similar to security, privacy, UI and functionality testing, accessibility audit is an important aspect of digital content to be usable for everyone…" https://www.maxability.co.in/2023/06/03/accessibility-audit-process/ Accessibility Testing - Pay Attention to the Details! By Jeff Singleton. "…It can be easy to become overconfident and get in a hurry when evaluating a website for conformance with WCAG. This is true even for seasoned accessibility testers. This is why testers need to diligently think about the limits of their testing tools, avoid being overconfident, pay attention to the details, and maintain a balance of testing quality and speed…" https://convergeaccessibility.com/2023/06/05/accessibility-testing-pay-attention-to-the-details/ Legal Update: May 2023 By Ken Nakata. "…After a dreary winter, this break has very nice and I've wanted to spend my days outside avoiding work. Lexis cooperated by offering few startling cases to analyze…" https://convergeaccessibility.com/2023/05/30/legal-update-may-2023/ $240,000.00 Jury Verdict in Blind Students' Accessibility Lawsuit Against Community College By Lainey Feingold. "This is an article about a lawsuit in the United States. The case was brought by two blind community college students and the National Federation of the Blind. The Los Angeles Community College District's math and other courses were not accessible to blind students who used screen readers…" https://www.lflegal.com/2023/05/blind-college-students-jury-verdict/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Quick Tip - Easily Find Missing alt Attributes Using One Line of CSS (Video) By Zoran Jambor. "Adding this one line of CSS in DevTools can help you easily identify missing alt attributes on images and thus help you solve those significant accessibility problems." https://www.youtube.com/shorts/50dn9OkbyRY Watch Out for Layout Shifts with 'ch' Units By Paul Hebert. "We recently worked with Cloudinary to rebuild their blog. There was a big focus on performance throughout the process, especially passing Core Web Vitals. However, we recently started seeing poor Cumulative Layout Shift scores on a number of posts. I set out to investigate…" https://cloudfour.com/thinks/watch-out-for-layout-shifts-with-ch-units/ Quick Tip: Shipping Resilient CSS Components By Stephanie Eckles. "In this quick tip excerpted from Unleashing the Power of CSS, Stephanie shows how container queries enable us to ship resilient components containing built-in layout and style variants…" https://www.sitepoint.com/quick-tip-shipping-resilient-css-components/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Help Users Think Aloud (Video) By Kate Kaplan. "Help users think aloud by explaining what it is and why it's useful, reinforcing the behavior, and prompting along the way." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/think-aloud/ Diary Studies: A Research Method Worth Trying By Lara Hocheiser. "…You can do diary studies for new products or existing ones…" https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2023/06/diary-studies-a-research-method-worth-trying.php Is What You See What You Get? Examining the Evaluator Effect in Unmoderated Usability Testing By Jeff Sauro, Dylan Atkins, Emily Short, David Du, and Jim Lewis. "If different researchers conduct a study, will they identify different problems?…" https://measuringu.com/examining-the-evaluator-effect-in-unmoderated-usability-testing/ Increasing Your Team's Efficiency by Using Research Standards and Templates By Karrie Comfort Letu. "…[We] have attempted to improve our efficiency by creating a process for the operational aspects of our research work [and] by reducing the time we spend on operations tasks that we can easily standardize…" https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2023/06/increasing-your-teams-efficiency-by-using-research-standards-and-templates.php +04: EVENTS. Accessibility Workshops Starting June 2023. Online https://www.mutua11y.org/2023/05/30/workshops-are-starting-in-june/ Web Technologies for Applications: Workshop and Coding Contest June 13, 2023. Paris, France https://www.w3.org/blog/2023/06/web-technologies-for-applications-workshop-and-coding-contest-in-paris-13-june-2023/ Help Audit Nonprofit Websites for Accessibility June 24, 2023. Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. https://www.meetup.com/atlanta-accessibility-meetup/events/293560048/ Disability:IN 2023 Annual Conference July 10-13, 2023. Orlando, Florida, U.S.A. https://disabilityin.org/2023conference/ Interface Design Patterns UX Training with Vitaly Friedman September 8-October 6 2023. Online https://smashingconf.com/online-workshops/workshops/interface-design-course-vitaly-friedman/ ABLE Summit September 14-15, 2023. Beirut, Lebanon https://sites.aub.edu.lb/able/ +05: HTML. HTML Concepts: Kinds of Elements By Jens Oliver Meiert. "There are six (not two, five, or eight) different kinds of elements in HTML…" https://meiert.com/en/blog/html-kinds-of-elements/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. The Many Ways to Select the N-Th Character From a String By Christian Heilmann. "A question I came across the other day during a JavaScript application test was this: 'How would you select the n-th character from the word "Example"?'…" https://christianheilmann.com/2023/06/02/the-many-ways-to-select-the-n-th-character-from-a-string/ Converting jQuery to Vanilla JavaScript By Chris Ferdinandi. "Over the weekend, I read an article by Ari Stathopoulos about converting some old jQuery code to vanilla JS…" https://gomakethings.com/converting-jquery-to-vanilla-javascript/ Why We Should Stop Using JavaScript According to Douglas Crockford (Inventor of JSON) (Video) By Douglas Crockford. "'JavaScript is a smelly language'! Hey, don't hate the messenger, it's Douglas Crockford, the cheeky creator of JSON and (former?) JavaScript evangelist who says so! Even though Douglas has spent decades working on JavaScript, he now believes it's high time we all stopped using it. Do you want to know why?…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc5Np9OqDHU +07: MISCELLANEOUS. How Friendship Between NVDA Founders Mick Curran And Jamie Teh is Changing Lives for Thousands of Blind People By Kristine Taylor and Susan Chenery. "…Mick and Jamie's disabilities have not been a barrier to success. The pair created screen-reading software called NVDA (Non-Visual Desktop Access) when they were fresh out of university. Seventeen years later, it's now used by 275,000 people in 175 countries and has been translated into 50 languages…" https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-05/mick-curran-jamie-teh-changing-lives-of-the-blind-with-nvda/101768788 A New, Exciting Era for WebAIM By Cyndi Rowland. "After 24 years as the Director of WebAIM, Cyndi Rowland is retiring. Read her reflections on the history of web accessibility and her vision for the future, and join us on June 22nd for a virtual gathering of friends and colleagues…" https://webaim.org/blog/a-new-exciting-era-for-webaim/ +08: NAVIGATION. Accessible Components: The Hamburger Menu By Rocío Alvarado. "One component we see quite often is the hamburger menu. It is composed of three short and thick horizontal lines. The symbol is called a hamburger because it roughly resembles the three layers of a hamburger: the bottom bun, the meat patty, and the top bun…" https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/accessible-components-hamburger-menu-roc%25C3%25ADo-alvarado/ +09: SITES & BLOGS. Mutua11y Blog By Rachael Montgomery. "Activities that advance the accessibility profession. This includes the accessibility mentoring program and workshops (the first of which is June 23rd)." https://www.mutua11y.org/blog/ +10: USABILITY. You Don't Need a Modal Window By Deniz Akşimşek. "Just make a separate page…" https://youdontneedamodalwindow.dev/ Skeleton Screens 101 By Samhita Tankala. "A skeleton screen is used as a placeholder while users wait for a page to load. This progress indicator is used for full page loads and reduces the perception of a long loading time by providing clues on how the page will ultimately look like." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/skeleton-screens/ Basic Psychology Is Essential for UX Practitioners (Video) By Tanner Kohler. "Basic psychological principles can guide you as a UX designer because most users share many common characteristics. Consider learning more about: motivation, attention, memory, persuasion, learning, decision making, emotion, sensation, perception, or cognitive biases." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/basic-psychology/ What I Learned About Deleting Online Accounts By Deborah Edwards-Oñoro. "…deleting an online account can be time-consuming and difficult. For organizations who don't provide an online option to cancel accounts, do better and respect your customers. Offboarding is as much a part of the customer experience as onboarding is." https://www.lireo.com/what-i-learned-about-deleting-online-accounts/ +11: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. Efficiency and Performance Are Environmentally Destructive Metrics By Gerry McGovern. "Efficiency nearly never leads to energy reduction. Performance nearly always involves the use of more materials…" https://gerrymcgovern.com/efficiency-and-performance-are-environmentally-destructive-metrics/ [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.]