+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 22, Issue 35, February 21, 2024. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 35 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: TOOLS. 09: USABILITY. 10: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Use Positive Language By Ellen Liebert, Laura Biray, Liz Thomas. "Negative statements and double negatives can be confusing. Use positive statements instead of negative ones to clarify the sentence's intent. Avoid double negatives to simplify the meaning of a sentence." https://www.ta11y.org/learning/topic?key=writing.lang_positive How Accessibility Standards Can Empower Better Chart Visual Design By Kent Eisenhuth. "…This article focuses on WCAG 2.1 standards, and it covers many techniques for embracing accessibility standards to empower better, more accessible visual design…" https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2024/02/accessibility-standards-empower-better-chart-visual-design/ Mobile Accessibility Barriers For Assistive Technology Users By Kate Kalcevich. "Accessibility goes beyond making products user-friendly. It can significantly impact the quality of life for people with disabilities. Kate Kalcevich shares lessons she learned from assistive technology users - challenges and barriers they encounter on mobile devices." https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2024/02/mobile-accessibility-barriers-assistive-technology-users/ What Does Leadership Look Like in the Accessibility Space? By Derek Featherstone. "As a leader (and an elder, if you will), in this space: It's my job to…" https://www.linkedin.com/posts/derekfeatherstone_accessibility-a11y-industryelder-activity-7162544600174297088-iYAZ Don't Care About Accessibility? Resistance Is Futile! By Bogdan Cerovac. "Personal reflection about my encounter with web and accessibility, how I was ignorant of it as well and how I think we can't be ignorant any more." https://cerovac.com/a11y/2024/02/dont-care-about-accessibility-resistance-is-futile/ Justice Department Secures Agreement with Oklahoma State Agency to Ensure Oklahoma Mobile Apps Are Accessible to People with Disabilities By U.S. Department of Justice. Regarding third-party service, "A public entity cannot contract away its ADA obligations". https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-secures-agreement-oklahoma-state-agency-ensure-oklahoma-mobile-apps-are New York State Will Require Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 for State and County Websites By Thomas Logan. "…In this episode of A11y Insights, Ken Nakata from Converge Accessibility and Equal Entry CEO and founder Thomas Logan talk about New York state signing into law requiring state agency and county websites to comply with WCAG 2.2 and how it compares to Colorado's efforts…" https://equalentry.com/accessibility-guidelines-new-york/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. What is Utility-First CSS? By Heydon Pickering. "You can't really appreciate utility-first CSS until you have a decent understanding of CSS itself, so this article will principally be about that. However, paradoxically, the more you learn about CSS, the less you may appreciate utility-first CSS. You might begin to question why it should exist at all. It's possible you'll even start to question why you exist…" https://heydonworks.com/article/what-is-utility-first-css/ Our Future CSS Strategy By Jacob Rask. "…If we could sum up our aim in one word, it would be resilience. If we could sum up the direction in one acronym, it would be CSS…" https://vcc-ui.vercel.app/blog/2022-11-23-future-css +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. No, AI User Research Is Not "Better Than Nothing" - It's Much Worse By Pavel Samsonov. "…If we normalize turning to LLMs for our understanding of user needs, we give up our claim on being 'champions for the user' and set off a race to the bottom that will see the design process, just like the publishing process, taken over by AI-generated sludge…" https://uxdesign.cc/no-ai-user-research-is-not-better-than-nothing-its-much-worse-5add678ab9e7 Usability Heuristics Applied to Board Games By Evan Sunwall. "Usability heuristics suggest what influences the design of successful board games." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-heuristics-board-games/ +04: EVENTS. StrategicA11y - Virtual Strategic Web Accessibility Workshop March 13-14 and 27-28, 2024. Online https://webaim.org/training/strategica11y/ JavaScript Days 2024 March 18-21, 2024. Online and Munich, Germany https://javascript-days.de/ WebDev Day March 20, 2024. Online https://www.wearedevelopers.com/event/webdev-day-march-2024 Advancing Research 2024 March 25-27, 2024. Online New York, New York, U.S.A. https://rosenfeldmedia.com/advancing-research/2024/ Web Accessibility Framework Webinar (Pope Tech) April 3, 2024. Online https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_-8pLJmlAQoyq40DP07QJFw#/registration UX Virtual Training April 13-19, 2024. Online https://www.nngroup.com/training/april/ International JavaScript Conference 2024 May 20-23, 2024. Online and San Diego, California, U.S.A. https://javascript-conference.com/ UX Scotland May 29-31, 2024. Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom https://uxscotland.net/ +05: HTML. Input Type 'date': The Accessibility of HTML Date Picker By Raghavendra Satish Peri. "As a screen reader user, I always dread finding a date picker that is not accessible on the website where I need to fill out forms…" https://www.digitala11y.com/input-type-date-the-accessibility-of-html-date-picker/ +06: JAVASCRIPT. ARIA `note` By Adrian Roselli. "…Depending on your goal with using the note role, you may find it is not exposed to screen readers the way you want. If you are using it as intended, that may not be an issue…" https://adrianroselli.com/2024/02/aria-note.html When It Says 'Name From Author' It Means From You, Not Boll or Bukowski By Steve Faulkner. "There is a list in the ARIA spec that details Roles Supporting Name from Author and which of these require an accessible name…" https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2024/02/14/when-it-says-name-from-author-it-means-from-you-not-boll-or-bukowski/ +07: MISCELLANEOUS. The Text File That Runs the Internet By David Pierce. "For decades, robots.txt governed the behavior of web crawlers. But as unscrupulous AI companies seek out more and more data, the basic social contract of the web is falling apart…" https://www.theverge.com/24067997/robots-txt-ai-text-file-web-crawlers-spiders I Worry Our Copilot Is Leaving Some Passengers Behind By Josh Collinsworth. "GitHub Copilot was one of the earliest 'AI' tools on the market-or at least, one of the first I was aware of. It came along well before ChatGPT exploded, so I and many other developers got the opportunity to try out these large language models (LLMs) before they really broke into the mainstream…" https://joshcollinsworth.com/blog/copilot A Dozen Thoughts About AI By Dave Rupert. "…I worry automating accessibility would give way to a libertarian mindset where accessible technology is an individual's concern, not an everybody responsibility and what externalities we do have in making accessible websites will go away. We already see this with overlay companies. Rather than fix issues at the source, we put the onus on the disabled person to figure out how to use a dongle so they can buy underwear on the internet. That's inequity…" https://daverupert.com/2024/02/robo-barf/ The Web Is Unversioned Sangwhan Moon and Amy Guy, Editors. "This finding sets out why associating a particular set of technologies with a version number for the web goes against the principle that there is one web…" https://w3ctag.github.io/the-web-is-not-versioned/ +08: TOOLS. Auditing Tools and Techniques to Improve Your Workflow (Video)(CSUN ATC 2023) By Ian Lloyd. "…This presentation was not filmed, but this is a run through done at home, same as what was presented on the day…I hope that in this session I will be able to conjure up some tips and tricks that you can take away to improve the way that you do your audits, or whatever other processes that…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U5MxcWquXA +09: USABILITY. How I Developed the 10 Usability Heuristics By Jakob Nielsen. "Jakob Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics were defined from a factor analysis of the use of a much larger set of usability principles to explain a database of usability problems in development projects. The 10 heuristics in the final list from 1994 had the greatest explanatory power in this analysis, which is why they are still useful today…" https://jakobnielsenphd.substack.com/p/usability-heuristics-history The Important Rules of UX that Everyone Breaks By Toby Biddle. "…Here throughout this blog post, we are going to explain some of these psychological principles and laws that the best UI/UX design agencies should adhere to…" https://www.loop11.com/the-important-rules-of-ux-that-everyone-breaks/ Encouraging Flow State in Products (Video) By Caleb Sponheim. "A Flow State is an enjoyable mental state of extreme focus provided by the perfect balance of challenge and skill. Follow our 3 tips to design products that allow users to enter the flow state." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/flow-state/ +10: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. Design Patterns that Encourage Junk Data By Michelle Barker. "The question is, how do we design our products and services so that it's easier and more convenient for users to delete junk data, or even better, to avoid creating it in the first place…" https://css-irl.info/design-patterns-that-encourage-junk-data/ IBM Design for Sustainability By International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) "Explore IBM Design's approach to designing for sustainability…" https://www.ibm.com/design/practices/design-for-sustainability/ Future Data Centres May Have Built-In Nuclear Reactors By Michael Dempsey. "…'A normal data centre needs 32 megawatts of power flowing into the building. For an AI data centre it's 80 megawatts,' says Mr Sharp…" https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68238330 The Magically Efficient Oven By Gerry McGovern. "…Networks, routers, data centers are all designed like crazy ovens, wasting huge quantities of materials and energy because digital is a culture of addiction and waste and always-on, always-available convenience. If you have to turn something on and off, that's at least some sort of break in relation to how much or how often you use it…" https://gerrymcgovern.com/the-magically-efficient-oven/ [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +11: 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.]