+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 16, Issue 38, March 15, 2018.

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

++ISSUE 38 CONTENTS.

SECTION ONE: New references.
What's new at the Web Design Reference site?
http://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.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: USABILITY.


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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

A DIY Web Accessibility Blueprint
By Beth Raduenzel.
"Good accessibility is good UX. We should seek to create the best user experience for all (not just the able-bodied). But launching a company accessibility remediation project can be a big undertaking. You will need to win over company leadership, build a multi-disciplinary accessibility team, and educate everyone on accessibility standards. In this article, Beth Raduenzel provides a step-by-step guide to making and maintaining an accessible website."
https://alistapart.com/article/diy-web-accessibility-blueprint

WCAG 2.1 Guidelines. What's New We May Expect? 
By Artur Kaczmarek.
"The first version of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) was released by Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) in 1999…"
https://www.joomla-monster.com/blog/web-development/wcag-2-1-guidelines-what-s-new

Text Splitting Causes Screen Reader Problems
By Daniel Göransson.
"I am a screen reader user, and I am annoyed…"
https://axesslab.com/text-splitting/

Accessibility for Developers
By İrem Ercan.
"Simple steps to improve and enforce your website accessibility…"
https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/accessibility-for-developers/

A Primer to Web Accessibility for Designers
By Nicholas Kramer.
"Quick wins to make your designs more inclusive…"
https://uxplanet.org/a-primer-to-web-accessibility-for-designers-2c548448c612

A11y Isn't Just…
By Dave Letorey.
Why a11y? A11y is a numeronym, presenting "accessibility" as "a" followed by 11 more letters, followed by "y".
https://letorey.co.uk/blog/a11y-isnt-just

When Accessibility Doesn't Make It into the EDUCAUSE Top 10: Turn It Up to 11
By Jess Thompson, Amy Rovner and Tom Gibbons.
"…as vital discussions around diversity and equity have moved into the spotlight, people with disabilities have frequently remained an afterthought, reflecting an ongoing societal struggle to adequately recognize their rights…"
https://er.educause.edu/articles/2018/3/when-accessibility-doesnt-make-it-into-the-educause-top-10-turn-it-up-to-11

How Do I Edit the Alternative Text for a Photo (on Facebook)?
By Facebook. (hat tip to @seanzdenek)
"How to replace auto generated alt-text on your Facebook photos and images with better, more accessible descriptions."
https://www.facebook.com/help/214124458607871


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Short Note on What CSS Display Properties do to Table Semantics
By Steve Faulkner.
"The CSS display properties are powerful…"
https://developer.paciellogroup.com/blog/2018/03/short-note-on-what-css-display-properties-do-to-table-semantics/

Writing CSS with Accessibility in Mind (Video)
By Manuel Matuzovic.
"…This talk aims to demystify web accessibility and provide you with simple and practical CSS tips and tricks, which you can easily incorporate into your workflow today. You are going to find out how to make your web projects more inclusive and improve the usability and user experience at the same time…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOiC2M47GBY

What's the Deal with Margin Collapse?
By Jonathan Harrell.
"Learn about the margin collapse, a fundamental concept of CSS layout. See visual examples of when margin collapse happens, and when it doesn't."
https://jonathan-harrell.com/whats-the-deal-with-margin-collapse/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Tips For Conducting Usability Studies With Participants With Disabilities
By Peter McNally.
"Over the last few years, I ran several usability studies with participants with various disabilities…"
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/03/tips-conducting-usability-studies-participants-disabilities/

43 Ways to Find Participants For Research
By Tomer Sharon.
"One of the biggest bottlenecks of research and a topic of unjust misconceptions is finding people who will participate in research…"
https://medium.com/@tsharon/43-ways-to-find-participants-for-research-ba4ddcc2255b

Dealing with Difficult Usability Test Participants
By David Travis.
"A common concern of people running usability tests is that sooner or later they'll run into a difficult participant. Who are these difficult characters and how can we prevent them from being a problem?…"
https://medium.com/@userfocus/dealing-with-difficult-usability-test-participants-113474fd5925

The UX Testing Tool That Was Here All This Time
By Diana Weschke.
"Have you ever heard of the User Experience Questionnaire or UEQ? If you have not, you need to download it right now…"
https://uxplanet.org/this-quick-tool-for-ux-tracking-was-here-all-this-time-for-free-bb9a195f6423

Why You Should Avoid Coffee Shop or Guerilla Usability Tests (Video)
By Sarah Doody.
"In this video, I'll address the controversial topic of conducting guerilla usability tests and user research interviews, otherwise known as 'coffee shop usability'…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPhq2ExH918

Is a Single Item Enough to Measure a Construct?
By Jeff Sauro.
"…Single item measures are likely adequate for some constructs… Multi-item measures are better for more complex constructs… Multi-item measures will improve the amount of points of discrimination… Use more points for single items… Consider test-retest as an alternate measure of reliability…"
https://measuringu.com/single-multi-items/


+04: EVENTS.

Leadership Exchange in Arts and Disability (LEAD®)
August 9-11, 2018. 
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A. 
http://education.kennedy-center.org/education/accessibility/lead/conference.html

An Event Apart Chicago
August 27-29, 2018.
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. 
https://aneventapart.com/event/chicago-2018

Authoring Tools Accessibility: New US and European Requirements
September 26, 2018.
Online
http://www.accessibilityassociation.org/content.asp?admin=Y&contentid=519


+05: HTML.

Swapping Images with the Sizes Attribute 
By Scott Jehl.
"…Overall, we find this trick to be really handy, particularly as it allows our clients to place all of their image sizes in one place in the markup, which tends to make integration easier with various content management systems…"
https://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/sizes-swap/

HTML5 Accessibility 
By Steve Faulkner.
"Get the current accessibility support status of HTML5 features across major browsers. Editor's draft, March 2018"
http://html5accessibility.com/

<main>
Updated By Steve Faulkner.
Steve updated the "@MozDevNet documentation for <main> to reflect the W3C/WHATWG definition alignment."
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/main

Accessible Autosuggest Dropdown
By Dennis Lembrée.
"…modified version of an accessible autosuggest from Intopia's autosuggest article…"
https://weboverhauls.github.io/demos/autosuggest/


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

One-Page-Applications Are Not Accessible 
By Craig Abbott.
"…People do amazing things. I don't doubt for one minute that a good accessible one-page-application is possible. But I've not seen one yet."
http://www.craigabbott.co.uk/one-page-applications-are-not-accessible

Planning for Everything: The Design of Paths and Goals
By Peter Morville.
"This is a sample chapter from Peter Morville's new book Planning for Everything: The Design of Paths and Goals…"
https://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2018/03/planning-for-everything-the-design-of-paths-and-goals.php


+09: NAVIGATION.

Why Organizations are Still so Bad at Findability
By Gerry McGovern.
"…If content is the oil of the Web, then findability is the petrol / gasoline. Content that is not findable is crude. It sits there with untapped potential. If you don't have a findability strategy, you don't have a digital strategy."
http://gerrymcgovern.com/why-organizations-are-still-so-bad-at-findability/


+10: USABILITY.

The Two UX Gulfs: Evaluation and Execution
By Kathryn Whitenton.
"With every interaction, users must overcome the twin challenges of understanding the current state of a system and figuring out how to change it. Designers can support them by being aware of these gulfs and bridging them with a transparent conceptual model."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/two-ux-gulfs-evaluation-execution/

Gestalt Theory for UX Designers: Principle of Similarity.
By Marina Yalanska.
"…today we are going back to basics: let's start revising how Gestalt grouping principles can affect user interfaces positively…"
https://design4users.com/2018/02/13/gestalt-theory-for-ux-designers-principle-of-similarity/

Banner Blindness: Ad-Like Elements Divert Attention (Video)
By Kara Pernice.
"Recent eyetracking studies confirm an old finding: People tend to ignore design elements that signal advertisements."
https://www.nngroup.com/videos/banner-blindness/

Attributes of Effective Agile UX (Video)
By Page Laubheimer.
"Agile is not easy for UX. However, blending Agile and UX can work with the right culture and mindset."
https://www.nngroup.com/videos/effective-agile-ux/

Creating User-Friendly Forms
By Momoh Silm.
"…creating user-friendly forms is a major key to increasing the completion rate of your forms…"
https://blog.prototypr.io/creating-user-friendly-forms-46e3f7f4eef2

User-Centered Web Development
By Jens Oliver Meiert.
"…Developer experience (and developer usability, as suggested in Principles of Web Development) matters, but ultimately we as developers do have users, and our work should reflect that…"
https://meiert.com/en/blog/user-centered-web-development/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

Accessibility Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/accessibility.html

Association Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/associations.html

Book Listings.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/books.html

Cascading Style Sheets Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/css.html

Color Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/color.html

Drupal Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.html

Evaluation & Testing Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/testing.html

Event Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/events.html

HTML Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/html.html

Information Architecture Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/architecture.html

JavaScript Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/javascript.html

Miscellaneous Web Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/misc.html

Navigation Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/navigation.html

PHP Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/php.html

Sites & Blogs Listing.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html

Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/standards.html

Tool Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/tools.html

Typography Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/type.html

Usability Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/usability.html

XML Information.
http://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:
http://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:lcar...@d.umn.edu 


[Issue ends.]