+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 26, Issue 17, October 21, 2025. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 17 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: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. SECTION TWO: 10: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. YouTube Studio Update: Where to Find Captions and Add Audio Description By Meryl K. Evans. "YouTube changed how creators add captions and descriptive audio to videos. The old 'Subtitles' tab is gone. Now you'll find everything under 'Languages' in YouTube Studio. This post shows where to find the new tools, how to use them, and why they matter for accessibility. It also explains how these changes affect your workflow and what to do to keep your content inclusive and easy to understand…" https://meryl.net/youtube-accessibility-captions-descriptive-audio-guide/ Common Misconceptions About Screen Readers By Ela Gorla. "Screen readers are familiar to many in digital, but how they work in practice can be less clear. In this post, we shed some light on the topic…" https://tetralogical.com/blog/2025/10/14/common-misconceptions-about-screen-readers/ When to Use Modal vs Dialog Components By Team A11Y Collective. "Confused about modal vs dialog components? Discover implementation patterns, accessibility guidelines, and best practices for creating user-friendly interfaces…" https://www.a11y-collective.com/blog/modal-vs-dialog/ Why Every Search Needs an Announced Empty State By Sheri Byrne-Haber. "…Accessibility isn't only about providing information when things go right. It is just as important to announce when things go wrong. Screen reader users deserve the same clarity everyone else gets. The phrase 'no results' may seem trivial, but it closes the feedback loop. It tells the user that the system heard them, processed their input, and completed the task…" https://buttondown.com/access-ability/archive/why-every-search-needs-an-announced-empty-state/ Know Your Standards (Updated October 20, 2025) By Steve Faulkner. "Regularly people link to or quote from some outdated version of a specification. This can be confusing and detrimental to understanding, if the information is no longer correct or relevant…" https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2020/11/24/know-your-standards/ Todd Libby on Deceptive Patterns (Video) By Shop talk Show (Dave Rupert and Chris Coyier hosts). "Todd Libby is on the show to talk with us about deceptive patterns on the web, what WCAG is and who it's for, and 5 deceptive patterns in use on the web today…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQpbt9kmFiM Be a Digital Ally: Tools and Techniques of a Blind Accessibility Auditor with Janine Leinbeck (Video) By Janine Leinbeck. "Have you ever wondered how it is that blind experts in digital accessibility conduct audits of websites, applications, and documents? What tools do we use to test? How many screen readers? How to reconcile different results with different assistive tech? If these and other questions intrigue you, this session of our monthly Be A Digital Ally (BADA) series is for you. Join professional accessibility auditor Jeanine Lineback to learn how an expert native screen reader user conducts a web site audit…" https://knowbility.org/blog/2025/tools-and-techniques-of-a-blind-accessibility-auditor Accessibility for Word and PPT (Podcast) By Chax Chat. "Chad Chelius and Dax Castro welcome Microsoft's Shireen Salma and Ylva Kravis to unpack new accessibility features in Word and PowerPoint, including the cross‑platform Reading Order pane, smarter AI‑generated alt text with approval workflows, and improved handling of floating images via anchors in Word. The discussion dives into table accessibility (layout tables, header detection, scope, merged cells), export-to-PDF best practices, and practical tips like grouping behavior, setting slide titles, and reviewing alt text in bulk with Accessibility Assistant…" https://a11ychax.libsyn.com/guest-microsoft-accessibility-for-word-and-ppt Talkin' Tables at A11yTO Conf By Adrian Roselli. "Abstract for my session Talkin' Tables, which I presented in place of another speaker who had to back out the day before…" https://adrianroselli.com/2025/10/talkin-tables-at-a11yto-conf.html Testing Methods: Keyboard By Dennis Deacon. "…When it comes to digital accessibility, few success criteria are as fundamental as WCAG 2.1.1 Keyboard. If a user can't navigate your product without a mouse, it doesn't matter how polished the design is or how innovative the features are, your experience is broken. The question isn't whether to test for keyboard accessibility, but how to test effectively. Automated tools, AI-based platforms, and manual testing all have a role to play, but each has its limits. Understanding their strengths and weaknesses is essential if you want more than just a compliance checkbox…" https://www.dennisdeacon.com/web/accessibility/testing-methods-keyboard/ "AI Is Inevitable" is Bullshit By Eric Eggert. "…What to do? Humans, humans, humans, humans. Train them in accessibility, guide them through issues that are difficult to identify, show them tools and techniques to reliably find accessibility bugs, and ensure that they think of accessibility from the beginning, side-stepping the issues…" https://yatil.net/blog/ai-is-inevitable-is-bullshit AXSChat Podcast with David Banes By Monika Tomczak. "David Banes is the Chair of the Equitable AI Alliance and General Secretary of DATEurope, the European Association for the Assistive Technology Industry…" https://www.axschat.com/axschat-podcast-with-david-banes/ Identifying Accessibility Data Gaps in CodeGen Models By Aaron Gustafson. "Late last year, I probed an LLM's responses to HTML code generation prompts to assess its adherence to accessibility best practices. The results were unsurprisingly disappointing - roughly what I'd expect from a developer aware of accessibility but unsure how to implement it. The study highlighted key areas where training data needs improvement…" https://www.aaron-gustafson.com/notebook/identifying-accessibility-data-gaps-in-codegen-models/ Webinar: When Compliance Isn't Accessible with Ben Moxey, Douglas Fogg, and Charlii Parker (Video) By Intopia. "Why passing WCAG doesn't mean your product works for everyone…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW8AQwn07sc Audit of the Massachusetts Teachers' Retirement System By Office of the State Auditor. "Our office conducted a performance audit of certain activities of the Massachusetts Teachers' Retirement System (MTRS) for the period July 1, 2023 through June 30, 2024…" https://www.mass.gov/audit/audit-of-the-massachusetts-teachers-retirement-system ADA Title II Digital Accessibility: Requirements, Exceptions, and Next Steps By Brooke Porter. "…We break down key sections of the rule based on real questions and examples discussed in our recent webinar. From social media obligations and third-party tools to exceptions and building a sustainable compliance framework, the goal is to help organizations move from uncertainty to action-knowing what to do first, where to focus, and how to document progress…" https://blog.usablenet.com/ada-title-ii-digital-accessibility-requirements-exceptions-and-next-steps +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. Style :headings By Álvaro Montoro. "…Styling headings in CSS is about to get much easier. With the new :heading pseudo-class and :heading() function, you can target headings in a cleaner and more flexible way…" https://alvaromontoro.com/tutorial/heading/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Henry Ford's Horse Problem Wasn't About Imagination By Anton Sten. "…Great products don't come from avoiding users-they come from understanding them deeply. Not asking what they want, but understanding what they struggle with. What they're working around…" https://www.antonsten.com/articles/henry-ford-horse-problem/ +04: EVENTS. Charting New Directions: Shaping the Future of Sustainable Development (A UN DESA Global Policy Dialogue) Oct 24, 2025. New York, New York, U.S.A.: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cWv-EzxcSCmHl-48qXUJig#/registration Online: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cWv-EzxcSCmHl-48qXUJig#/registration Understanding ADA Title II: Accessibility Auditing, Compliance, and Prioritization with David Sloan October 28, 2025. Online https://www.tpgi.com/webinar-understanding-ada-title-ii-accessibility-auditing-compliance-and-prioritization/ User Centered Testing with User Journeys with Charlie Pike October 30, 2025. Online https://www.tpgi.com/webinar-user-centered-testing-with-user-journeys-2025/ Accessibility Testing: ARIA, Ask the Professionals with Andrew Downie, Rafal Charlampowic, Sara Soueidan, and Russ Weakley November 13, 2025. Online https://events.humanitix.com/ozewai-accessibility-testing-aria-ask-the-professionals-13-november-2025 World Usability Day Texas November 13, 2025. Online and Austin, Texas U.S.A. https://www.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_y1XzZN4CSZiuE6B2oQI2vg#/registration +05: HTML. Page Headings Don't Belong in the Header By Martin Underhill. "Unsurprisingly, I have a tendency to think pretty deeply about semantics and structure. Recently, I've been considering

elements and where they live in the document, and I've landed on keeping it outside the header…" https://www.tempertemper.net/blog/page-headings-dont-belong-in-the-header HTML Dialog: Getting Accessibility and UX Right By Jared Cunha. "The HTML dialog element gives us powerful native modal capabilities, but creating dialogs that work well for all users still requires intentional accessibility and UX decisions…" https://jaredcunha.com/blog/html-dialog-getting-accessibility-and-ux-right Implicit Labels Aren't By Chris Ferdinandi. "In HTML, you can associate a