+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 25, Issue 28, January 8, 2025.

An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. 

++ISSUE 28 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: EVENTS.
04: HTML.
05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: USABILITY.
09: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.

SECTION TWO: 
10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Principles Of Web Accessibility
By Heydon Pickering.
"A set of high-level guiding principles for approaching web accessibility…"
https://github.com/Heydon/principles-of-web-accessibility

How to Do Alt Text on Social Media for Artists and Photographers
By Nicolas Steenhout.
"Adding alt text on images you post on social media is important for blind people to access your content…"
https://nicolas-steenhout.com/alt-text-social-media-for-artists-and-photographers/

PDF Accessibility on the Web: Tricks and Traps (Video)
By Ricky Onsman.
"PDF documents on the web can be made accessible if the proper techniques are applied - but even then, there are some things to watch out for. TPGi's Principal Technical Writer, Ricky Onsman, highlights some problems and solutions. This is a recording of an October 2024 WordPress Accessibility Meetup…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTWxadXcFME

Updated Reflow Understanding Document GitHub #4055 
By Scott O'Hara.
"This initial commit takes the current draft from the google doc that had been worked on for quite some time now, and makes it into a PR for further editing and review…" Scott has been working hard on a proposed update to the 1.4.10: Reflow (Level AA) Understanding doc. It will need to be approved by the Working Group.
Pull Request:
https://github.com/w3c/wcag/pull/4055
Preview:
https://deploy-preview-4055--wcag2.netlify.app/understanding/reflow
Diff:
https://services.w3.org/htmldiff?doc1=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2FWAI%2FWCAG22%2FUnderstanding%2Freflow.html&doc2=https%3A%2F%2Fdeploy-preview-4055--wcag2.netlify.app%2Funderstanding%2Freflow

Mobile Accessibility Advent Calendar Part 1 
By Mark Steadman.
"In the month of December, I created a mobile accessibility advent calendar across social platforms (LinkedIN, BlueSky). Each day I posted something about mobile accessibility to strengthen the knowledge of the a11y community, mobile developers and designers…"
https://dev.to/steady5063/mobile-accessibility-advent-calendar-part-1-1iac

Unlocking Accessibility: User Researchers Share Their Approach to Digital Accessibility and Recruiting People With Disabilities
By Kelly Clarkson and Samantha Merrett.
"…In the second installment of this series, we asked user researchers from various government departments and public sector organisations about their role in making digital services accessible, recruiting people with access needs, and sharing best practices for integrating accessibility into the user research process…"
https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2025/01/07/unlocking-accessibility-user-researchers-share-their-approach-to-digital-accessibility-and-recruiting-people-with-disabilities/

The European Accessibility Act: Understanding Digital Accessibility
By Digital Accessibility Centre (DAC).
"…This explainer describes the responsibilities on various entities created by the act, including the types of products and services covered by the act. Conformance to the act primarily relies on harmonised standards, and there are measures to address fundamental alteration and disproportionate burden. Finally the explainer collates and describes all the accessibility requirements for various types of products and services…"
https://digitalaccessibilitycentre.org/blogs/NewEAA-20241217.html

FTC Order Requires Online Marketer to Pay $1 Million for Deceptive Claims that its AI Product Could Make Websites Compliant with Accessibility Guidelines
By Federal Trade Commission.
"Company also failed to disclose material connections to online reviewers…"
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2025/01/ftc-order-requires-online-marketer-pay-1-million-deceptive-claims-its-ai-product-could-make-websites

FTC Catches Up to #accessiBe
By By Adrian Roselli.
"The Federal Trade Commission will require software provider accessiBe to pay $1 million to settle allegations that it misrepresented the ability of its AI-powered web accessibility tool to make any website compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) for people with disabilities…"
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/01/ftc-catches-up-to-accessibe.html

FTC Orders AI Accessibility Startup accessiBe to Pay $1M for Misleading Advertising
By Kyle Wiggers.
"…The FTC's order, which was approved unanimously by the FTC's five commissioners, will be subject to public comment for 30 days, after which the Commission will decide whether to make it final."
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/03/ftc-orders-ai-accessibility-startup-accessibe-to-pay-1m-for-misleading-advertising/

2025 - the Year for Worldwide E-Commerce Accessibility?
By Bogdan Cerovac.
"2025 is the year of European Accessibility Act. But we can establish that it will help with global accessibility, not only European…"
https://cerovac.com/a11y/2025/01/2025-the-year-for-worldwide-e-commerce-accessibility/

The 2025 LFLegal Digital Accessibility Joy Plan 
By Lainey Feingold.
"This is an article about the value of having a Joy Plan as we enter a challenging and scary political time in the United States.…"
https://www.lflegal.com/2025/01/joy-plan/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Balancing Text In CSS
By Ahmad Shadeed.
"Almost two years ago, I published an article about text-wrap: balance and how useful it is. I thought about revisiting the topic with a more solid exploration and examples that include different values of text-wrap…"
https://ishadeed.com/article/balancing-text-css/


+03: EVENTS.

devopsdays Raleigh
April 16-17, 2025.
Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A.
https://devopsdays.org/events/2025-raleigh/

JS Naked Day
April 24, 2025.
Online
https://js-naked-day.org/

Symposium on Usability and Design
April 24-25, 2025.
Strasbourg, France
https://usability-conference.unistra.fr/

The Web Conference 2025
April 28-May 2, 2025.
Sydney, Australia
https://www2025.thewebconf.org/

ACCESS 2025
April 29-30, 2025.
Online
https://go.3playmedia.com/en/access/2025-save-the-date


+04: HTML.

Brief Note on Figure and Figcaption Support
By Adrian Roselli.
"…the <figcaption> element should not provide the accName for the figure nor the content it contains…"
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/01/brief-note-on-figure-and-figcaption-support.html

Updated Brief Note on Description List Support
By Adrian Roselli.
"Description list support continues to be generally good (with VoiceOver still the outlier), even if you may not like how it is supported…"
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/01/updated-brief-note-on-description-list-support.html

Using iframes to Embed Arbitrary Content Is Probably a Bad Idea
By Martin Underhill.
"The <iframe> element is a way to embed one web page inside of another. They're often used to deliver a video, working code example, or video as part of other page content, which is pretty sensible, but I've seen them being suggested as a way to embed general text-based page content, which is problematic…"
https://www.tempertemper.net/blog/using-iframes-to-embed-arbitrary-content-is-probably-a-bad-idea

HTML Is Actually a Programming Language. Fight Me
By Tim Carmody.
"In fact, HTML is the most significant computing language ever developed. Underestimate it at your peril…"
https://www.wired.com/story/html-is-actually-a-programming-language-fight-me/


+05: INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE.

What's the Object of Information Architecture?
By Jorge Arango.
"…IA might be a meta-discipline. This works against describing how IA creates value in terms most people can understand. The over-simplified phrase 'organizing information to make it more useful' is still too abstract, since 'information' doesn't evoke tangible images…"
https://jarango.com/2025/01/03/whats-the-object-of-information-architecture/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Ethical Web Principles
Daniel Appelquist, Hadley Beeman, and Amy Guy, editors.
"The web should be a platform that helps people and provides a positive social benefit. As we continue to evolve the web platform, we must therefore consider the consequences of our work. The following document sets out ethical principles that will drive W3C's continuing work in this direction.…"
https://www.w3.org/TR/ethical-web-principles/

Bill Requiring US Agencies to Share Custom Source Code With Each Other Becomes Law
By Madison Alder.
"President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan legislation into law Dec. 23…"
https://fedscoop.com/agencies-must-share-custom-source-code-under-new-share-it-act/

An Overview of the 50 Highest-Ranking Web Design and Development Glossaries
By Jens Oliver Meiert.
"…To provide a missing overview of the web development glossary landscape (which goes beyond a friendly but casual list), I've collected the best-ranking glossaries, and added data on how comprehensive they are, whether they're maintained, and whether there's anything special to call out (all of which is also available as a Google spreadsheet)…"
https://meiert.com/en/blog/tech-glossaries-overview/

Your App Should Have Been A Website (And Probably Your Game Too)
By P. Martin Ortiz.
"…Native apps are a pain for everyone involved. Developers pay hefty app store fees, jump through approval hoops, and juggle multiple platform versions. Users? We're stuck with constant updates, wasted storage space, and apps that don't even work on all our devices…"
https://rogueengine.io/blog/your-app-should-have-been-a-website


+07: NAVIGATION.

Super Short Note on Links in iOS With VoiceOver
By Steve Faulkner.
"I have been doing some testing and have noticed when navigating links on iOS using VoiceOver (VO), if the link contains an element that is not exposed as a generic element it causes VO to treat and announce text in the link as separate links…"
https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2025/01/02/super-short-note-on-links-in-ios-with-voiceover/


+08: USABILITY.

UX Quiz: 2024 Year in Review
By Raluca Budiu.
"Test your usability knowledge by taking our quiz. All questions and answers are based on articles that we published last year…"
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-quiz/


+09: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.

Working Group of the Degrowth Movement Assembly
By IDN.
"The International Degrowth Network (IDN) invites you to be part of the working group to co-organise the upcoming Degrowth Movement Assembly 2025…"
https://my.liberaforms.org/working-group-of-the-degrowth-movement-assembly

AI Needs So Much Power, It's Making Yours Worse
By Leonardo Nicoletti, Naureen Malik, and Andre Tartar.
"AI data centers are multiplying across the US and sucking up huge amounts of power. New evidence shows they may also be distorting the normal flow of electricity for millions of Americans…"
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-ai-power-home-appliances/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+10: 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.


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+ 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.]