+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 22, Issue 32, January 31, 2024. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 32 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: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 09: NAVIGATION. 10: TOOLS. 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. Data Visualization with WCAG 2.1: Content on Hover or Focus, and Pointer Gestures By Nancy Rice and Becky Bernauer. "Two of our data visualization experts discuss how to support and test the Guidelines Content on Hover or Focus, and Pointer Gestures for more accessible and usable websites and apps." https://mn.gov/mnit/media/blog/?id=38-607342 Accessibility Testing Spreadsheet Version 2 By Rachele DiTullio. "I've updated the spreadsheet I use for tracking accessibility audits with three big additions. WCAG 2.2 success criteria added I've added the six new WCAG 2.2 level A and AA success criteria (SC) to the 'WCAG Success Criterion' column in each component's tab. This brings the total number of SCs for an audit to 56…" https://racheleditullio.com/blog/2024/01/accessibility-testing-spreadsheet-version-2/ 7 Tips for Devs and Designers to Set Your Accessibility Efforts Up for Success By Aparna Pasi. "When I audit websites, it's evident that some of the issues I identify could have been avoided either directly in design or early in development if the developer knew what the designer intended the functionality of the element to be…" https://www.deque.com/blog/7-tips-for-devs-and-designers-to-set-your-accessibility-efforts-up-for-success/ What Has a Ceiling but No Floor? By Matt May. "…When you make a hardware or software platform for others to build on, you alone set the ceiling for how accessible it can be…It's your responsibility to show users where to put alt text for their images (if not require them to do so). It's your responsibility to manage color and font preferences, keyboard shortcuts, system-wide settings for captions, etc. in advance. Anything you do not offer, those who build on your platform will not be able to use. You are setting the ceiling for the accessibility of anything that's built…" https://buttondown.email/practicaltips/archive/what-has-a-ceiling-but-no-floor/ Changes to the Design System to Meet WCAG 2.2 By GOV.UK. There's a new section on the GOV.UK Design System website. https://design-system.service.gov.uk/accessibility/wcag-2.2/ Accessibility Advocates Sued by French Overlay Company By Thomas Logan. "FACIL'iti is a French accessibility overlay company. The company sued two accessibility leaders who participated in a conversation about accessibility overlays alleging defamation. On the side of the defendants, many describe this as a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP)…" https://equalentry.com/accessibility-advocates-sued-by-french-overlay-company/ Overlays and Ethics: A Conference Panel That Hurt My Heart By Lainey Feingold. "This is an article about a panel scheduled for an accessibility conference. Lainey was upset by this panel. Right before she published this article explaining why, she was glad to learn that the organizers decided to withdraw the panel. She is still posting this article this article because she hopes the same mistakes will not be made again. Lainey believes this panel was not ethical. It did not include a diversity of opinions about web access overlays which is software that can create barriers for disabled people. There were seven panelists and they were all men. Most did not identify as disabled in conference materials and most if not all were white. One panelist was from a company that is suing accessibility professionals in France…" https://www.lflegal.com/2024/01/zero-con-overlay-panel/ Legal Update: January 2024 By Ken Nakata. "Happy New Year! 2023 was a good year for Converge Accessibility. In terms of legal cases, however, the year ended fairly quietly…" https://convergeaccessibility.com/2024/01/29/legal-update-january-2024/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Big, Beautiful, Beefy Focus States with :focus-visible By Dave Rupert. "One thing I love about the new'ish :focus-visible pseudo-state is that it allows me to create bigger, bolder, and more obvious focus states for my keyboard users than I normally would with a :focus pseudo-state that might flash or linger on a click…" https://daverupert.com/2024/01/focus-visible-love/ 12 Modern CSS One-Line Upgrades By Stephanie Eckles. "Sometimes, improving your application CSS just takes a one-line upgrade or enhancement…" https://moderncss.dev/12-modern-css-one-line-upgrades/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Open-Ended vs. Closed Questions in User Research By Maria Rosala. "Open-ended questions result in deeper insights. Closed questions provide clarification and detail, but no unexpected insights." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/open-ended-questions/ Assessing Interrater Reliability in UX Research By Jim Lewis and Jeff Sauro. "…In this article, we'll go over the two most common measures of reliability used in UX research: kappa (for classification studies) and any-2 agreement (for discovery studies)…" https://measuringu.com/assessing-interrater-reliability-in-ux-research/ +04: EVENTS. The Accessibility Mindset: Moving Beyond Remediating, Fixing, and Reacting with Jesse Loseberg February 8, 2024. Online https://a11ytalks.com/posts/2024-FEB/ ATHEN Virtual Science, Technology, Engineering, Math (STEM) Accessibility Conference February 8-9, 2024. Online https://athenpro.org/content/athen-virtual-conference Fireside Chat with Jakob Nielsen and Sarah Gibbons February 22, 2024. Online https://adplist.org/session/fireside-chat-with-jakob-nielsen-sarah-gibbons Charting the Way Forward: Strengthening Disability Awareness and Advocacy within the African American Community February 24, 2024. Online, New York City and Washington, D.C., U.S.A. https://www.theresourcekey.com/chartingtheway/ ACCESS April 30-May 1, 2024. Online https://go.3playmedia.com/en/access/2024-save-the-date UX London 2024 June 18-20, 2024. London, England, United Kingdom https://2024.uxlondon.com/ Pixel Pioneers 2024 June 14, 2024. Bristol, England, United Kingdom https://pixelpioneers.co/events/bristol-2024 Tech Events Calendar By Ricky Onsman. "TPGi maintains a calendar of tech events…" https://www.tpgi.com/tech-events-calendar/ +05: HTML. HTML Web Components on the Server Are Great By Scott Jehl. "I'll start this post by echoing what many others have been saying: Web Components are having a moment lately…" https://scottjehl.com/posts/composition/ The Web Component Success Story By Jake Lazaroff. "Tom MacWright wrote a short post wondering why we don't see prominent applications using web components. That's a fair question…" https://jakelazaroff.com/words/the-web-component-success-story/ +06: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE. UX Prototyping: 5 Factors for Selecting the Right Tool (Video) By Megan Brown. "Choosing the right prototyping tool can be difficult among the many options available. There are 5 key factors to consider when selecting the best fit for your project or team: project type and goals, cost, tool capabilities, learnability and ease of use, and stakeholder buy-in." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/prototyping-tool/ +07: JAVASCRIPT. For Review: WAI-ARIA 1.3 First Public Working Draft By Shawn Lawton Henry. "W3C WAI invites you to comment on the First Public Working Draft of: Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 1.3…" https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wai-announce/2024JanMar/0000.html Concatenating Text By Johan Halse. "…My wish for 2024 is that everyone gets the epiphany that React is legacy tech from 2013 when browsers didn't have template strings or a BFCache. Then it can finally pass into a sort of dignified irrelevance, and the general consensus can coalesce around the fact that a nice and robust server-rendering framework is probably what you need (unless you're Figma, but my second wish for 2024 is that we all shut up about Figma.) Then maybe we can start coming up with good ways of sharing and collaborating on Web Components instead. Seems like a better use of everyone's time." https://johan.hal.se/wrote/2024/01/24/concatenating-text/ +08: MISCELLANEOUS. One World, One Web, One Love By Aaron Gustafson. "Today would have been Molly Holzschlag's 61st birthday. I want to take a moment to remember her by sharing a bit from a post she made way back in 2012 on the new defunct Pastry Box Project…" https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/one-world-one-web-one-love/ This Web Page is Best Viewed in the EU By Jason Grigsby. "…Given Apple's track record of doing the bare minimum in response to regulations, it's clear that we can't rely on the tech giant to voluntarily extend these browser freedoms beyond the EU. It's time for U.S. regulators to step in and ensure that American users and developers also benefit from real browser choice." https://cloudfour.com/thinks/this-web-page-is-best-viewed-in-the-eu/ Apple, the DMA, and Malicious Compliance By Bruce Lawson. "If you're the kind of gorgeous funbundle who reads my blog, you've doubtless heard that Apple will finally allow full versions of Chrome and Firefox to run on the iPhone, but only in the European Union…" https://brucelawson.co.uk/2024/apple-and-malicious-compliance/ The EU Forces Open Apple's Walled Garden By Josh Centers. "Apple has announced extraordinary changes to how iOS apps will be distributed in the European Union…" https://tidbits.com/2024/01/29/the-eu-forces-open-apples-walled-garden/ Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training By Evan Hubinger, et al. "…If an AI system learned such a deceptive strategy, could we detect it and remove it? Researchers found that deceptive behavior is very hard to change, particularly in large models. Trying to train the models not to be deceptive, in fact, helped the models hide their deceptive behavior even better. 'Our results suggest that, once a model exhibits deceptive behavior, standard techniques could fail to remove such deception and create a false impression of safety…" https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.05566 +09: NAVIGATION. From Headers to Footers: Creating Accessible Experience with Landmarks By Raghavendra Satish Peri. "…By consciously incorporating landmarks into our design and development processes, we take a significant stride towards a more universally accessible web…" https://www.digitala11y.com/from-headers-to-footers-creating-accessible-experience-with-landmarks/ The First Thing I Do to Evaluate the Quality of Your #Usability or #Accessibility Article… By Adrian Rosell. "…is to see if the links are underlined. If not, I shake my head, then check the contrast with the surrounding text. If that fails, I then decide if I simply close the tab or warn people away from the site in general. I kinda wish I had warnings I could nail to web pages." https://toot.cafe/@aardrian/111828521380129873 +10: TOOLS. Check for accesskey and aria-keyshortcuts Bookmarklet By Steve Faulkner. "Made this to quickly check for presence of accesskey and aria-keyshortcuts attributes to help in testing WCAG 2.2 Success Criterion 2.1.4 Character Key Shortcuts…" https://cdpn.io/pen/debug/yLwoEwO +11: USABILITY. Mental Models By Jakob Nielsen and Megan Chan. "What users believe they know about a user interface impacts how they use it. Mismatched mental models are common, especially with designs that try something new." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mental-models/ Time Scales of UX: From 0.1 Seconds to 100 Years By Jakob Nielsen. "UX unfolds over time, with a factor of 31 billion from the shortest time period of interest (0.1 seconds for the illusion of instantaneous response time) to the longest time span we can realistically consider (a century for major social channels)…" https://jakobnielsenphd.substack.com/p/time-scale-ux Specification Lists Have Terrible Usability By Jakob Nielsen. "Dissecting the anatomy of specification sheets on ecommerce platforms. Using Amazon as a case study to illustrate common pitfalls and practical advice for crafting more user-friendly tables where users can compare multiple items…" https://jakobnielsenphd.substack.com/p/specification-lists +12: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. What's the Environmental Impact of Your Website? By Eric Karkovack. "…take a moment to measure your site's environmental impact. Then, look for areas of improvement. The steps you take will benefit everyone." https://speckyboy.com/environmental-impact-of-your-website/ Adapting Cloud Carbon Footprint's Methodology to Website Carbon Estimates By Fershad Irani. "…In this post I will look at an possible alternative approach to calculating the emissions of the server (data center/hosting) segment in website carbon calculations…" https://fershad.com/writing/adapting-cloud-carbon-footprints-methodology-to-website-carbon-estimates/ Vitaly Friedman: Cleaner Web Design for a Better Environment (Part 3) By Gerry McGovern. "'Everyone is collecting so much data that frankly is rarely used, and if it is used, it's not in a good way,' Vitaly Friedman tells me…" https://gerrymcgovern.com/vitaly-friedman-cleaner-web-design-for-a-better-environment-part-3/ [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.]