Web Design Update: November 11, 2025

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 26, Issue 20, November 11, 2025.

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

++ISSUE 20 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: BOOKS.
03: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: EVENTS.
05: HTML.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Quick Tip: Use More Than Tab in Screen Readers
By Nat Tarnoff.
"…One of the issues I often see flagged by other accessibility testers is that something doesn't work with keyboard navigation. The vast majority of times I revisit these, it turns out the tester doesn't fully understand how screen readers work. I want to highlight a few items for folks…"
https://tarnoff.info/2025/11/03/quick-tip-use-more-than-tab-in-screen-readers/

Testing Methods: Pause, Stop, Hide
By Dennis Deacon.
"WCAG 2.2.2 Pause, Stop, Hide is a Level A conformance level Success Criterion designed to put users back in control…"
https://www.dennisdeacon.com/web/accessibility/testing-methods-pause-stop-hide/

Testing Methods: Timing Adjustable
By Dennis Deacon.
"WCAG 2.2.1 Timing Adjustable is a Level A conformance level Success Criterion. It ensures that users are not unfairly constrained by time limits. For any content-imposed time limit, one of the following must be true…"
https://www.dennisdeacon.com/web/accessibility/testing-methods-timing-adjustable/

Testing Methods: Character Key Shortcuts
By Dennis Deacon.
"WCAG 2.1.4 Character Key Shortcuts is a Level A conformance level Success Criterion. It addresses a subtle but critical accessibility concern: keyboard shortcuts triggered by single character keys…"
https://www.dennisdeacon.com/web/accessibility/testing-methods-character-key-shortcuts/

100, 150, or 200? Debunking the Alt Text Character Limit
By Chris Yoong.
"The arbitrary limit can be built into input fields and automated tooling…"
https://chrisyoong.com/blog/the-100-150-or-200-characters-alt-text-rule-is-a-myth

The Curse of the Custom Cursor
By Malin Hammarberg.
"Picture this: you visit a website and suddenly your trusty arrow cursor has been accompanied by a pulsating purple blob the size of a dinner plate. Congratulations - you've just been cursor-jacked.…"
https://stiftelsenfunka.org/about-us/columns/the-curse-of-the-custom-cursor/

Fixing Accessibility Issues Live: A Real-World Remediation Demo (Video)
By AAArdvark.
"Join us for a hands-on livestream where we roll up our sleeves and fix real accessibility issues! We've already audited our marketing site and identified the problems. Now watch as we work through them live using AAArdvark to manage the remediation process…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKPzTlDwoIo

Why 44% of Your Audience Might Not Understand You: An Interview with Jamila Savoy
By Josh Crawford.
"We often get questions about plain language and its connection to accessibility. To help answer them, we've invited our friend and plain language expert Jamila Savoy for a conversation about why clear writing matters and how it builds trust with your audience…"
https://www.digitalaccesstraining.com/pages/articles?p=why-your-audience-might-not-understand-you

Toasts
By GitHub.
"GitHub no longer uses toasts because of their accessibility and usability issues…"
https://primer.style/accessibility/toasts/

Shopify Needs a Mirrorfy
By Adrian Roselli.
"Shopify is legitimately angry at drive-by ADA lawsuits, as outlined in its recent post The small business shakedown: Why thousands of entrepreneurs are getting buried in lawsuits…"
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/11/shopify-needs-a-mirrorfy.html

Trusting the Browser
By Thomas Günther.
"I've been thinking about how we approach accessibility in web development. Particularly about trusting the browser to implement things in an accessible way…"
https://medienbaecker.com/articles/trusting-the-browser

Why Separate Guest and Logged In States Create Accessibility Barriers
By Sheri Byrne-Haber.
"Do you have differing logged-in and logged-out experiences for your users? Do you merge the two when someone logs in? If you don't, you are creating accessibility barriers…"
https://buttondown.com/access-ability/archive/why-separate-guest-and-logged-in-states-create/

Sustainable Accessibility in Complex Organisations: Strategic Foundations
By Henny Swan.
"Whether at the start of your accessibility journey or partway through it, complex organisations often face strategic, organisational, and external barriers that can make scaling accessibility difficult…"
https://tetralogical.com/blog/2025/11/07/sustainable-accessibility-in-complex-organisations-strategic-foundations/

Sustainable Accessibility in Complex Organisations: Organisational Realities
By Henny Swan.
https://tetralogical.com/blog/2025/11/07/sustainable-accessibility-in-complex-organisations-organisational-realities/

Sustainable Accessibility in Complex Organisations: External Factors
By Henny Swan.
https://tetralogical.com/blog/2025/11/07/sustainable-accessibility-in-complex-organisations-external-factors/


+02: BOOKS.

Now Available: 'On Web Development II'!
By Jens Oliver Meiert.
"A comprehensive ebook marking another 10 years of meiert.com, featuring 180 curated articles on web development from 2015 to 2025."
https://meiert.com/blog/on-web-development-2/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Insights Aren't Outcomes: Research Recommendation Breakage
By Brian Utesch and Tammi Fitzwater.
"Research recommendations often fail to reach users. Without tracking adoption, teams rely on hope instead of evidence to confirm their work creates change."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/research-recommendation-breakage/

What Makes a Good UX Research Moderator?
By Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis.
"…In this article, we explore the attributes that differentiate between inadequate and excellent moderators… "
https://measuringu.com/what-makes-a-good-ux-research-moderator/


+04: EVENTS.

World Usability Day Texas
November 13, 2025.
Online and Austin Texas, U.S.A.
https://www.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_y1XzZN4CSZiuE6B2oQI2vg

Captions, Subtitles or Transcripts With Susanna Laurin, Funka Foundation
November 21, 2025.
Online
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_6Di2ABnATT2CCY_hE0PaMQ#/registration

Enhance Digital Accessibility With Tools, Strategies and Insights
December 17, 2025.
Online
https://events.zoom.us/ev/AqDsGyIoVxt66SRVlM1vpczZgi7Zl2wjjj03aXBJl2eGmkIs83rF~AjzQJ4yewUMkpt3biujL8bHWgTDtm4gdCMWw3RUkweiFkD8EI5tpigVXHHuCiRxzbNhExQ3ykFBZi4p51nlnXSBRAA

Deep Dive On Accessibility Testing with Manuel Matuzović
January 19-February 2, 2026.
Online
https://smashingconf.com/online-workshops/workshops/accessibility-testing-manuel-matuzovic/

Accessibility Professionals Association National Conference "Growing Stronger Together"
January 21-23, 2026.
Round Rock, Texas, U.S.A.
https://www.apaaccess.org/apa-national-conference/


+05: HTML.

Explaining the Accessible Benefits of Using Semantic HTML Elements
By Geoff Graham.
"Here's something you'll spot in the wild: <div class="btn" role="button">Custom Button</div>. This is one of those code smells that makes me stop in my tracks because we know there's a semantic <button> element that we can use instead.…"
https://css-tricks.com/explaining-the-accessible-benefits-of-using-semantic-html-elements/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

A Bridge Made of Ableism
By Robert Kingett.
"The air in the bank was thick with the scent of old money and new anxiety…"
https://sightlessscribbles.com/a-bridge-made-of-ableism/

Fireside Chat 1 Pat (Video)
By Steve Faulkner.
Steve talks with Patrick H. Lauke. They discuss accessibility work, disability, and the impact of AI and "woke" on the industry. Patrick details his standards work on the WCAG 2 backlog Task Force and Pointer Events Working Group, and explains the value of face-to-face W3C meetings at TPAC for effective collaboration over online interaction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hgJnqCsQrQ

David Sloan - Chief Accessibility Officer at TPGi
By Joe James.
"In this episode of The Digital Accessibility Podcast, Joe is joined by David Sloan, Chief Accessibility Officer at TPGi/Vispero, and one of the most respected voices in inclusive design and digital accessibility research…"
https://the-digital-accessibility-podcast.captivate.fm/episode/david-sloan

"A.I." Browsers: The Price of Admission Is Too High
By Bruce Lawson.
"It’s a cliché that 'data is the new oil' that will power the next industrial revolution. Where does the data that powers Artificial Intelligence come from? And if data is the fuel for AI, what is the product?…"
https://vivaldi.com/blog/a-i-browsers-the-price-of-admission-is-too-high/

A (Kind Of) Farewell to the Web
By John Allsopp.
"Front-end engineering is at a crossroads, and right now I'm not optimistic about it.…"
https://webdirections.org/blog/a-kind-of-farewell-to-the-web/


+07: NAVIGATION.

Link vs Button: Choosing the Right Element for the Right Job
By Deeksha Yadav.
"When it comes to building accessible and user-friendly interfaces, one of the most overlooked distinctions in web development is between links and buttons. They may look similar visually and even behave similarly when styled with CSS or enhanced with JavaScript, but their semantics and purposes are fundamentally different, and these differences matter greatly for accessibility."
https://www.tpgi.com/link-vs-button-choosing-the-right-element-for-the-right-job/

Your URL Is Your State
By Ahmad Alfy.
"…How often do we, as frontend engineers, overlook the URL as a state management tool? We reach for all sorts of abstractions to manage state such as global stores, contexts, and caches while ignoring one of the web's most elegant and oldest features: the humble URL…"
https://alfy.blog/2025/10/31/your-url-is-your-state.html


+08: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.

Building Green Software
By Anne Currie, Sarah Hsu and Sara Bergman.
"…Building Green Software published by O'Reilly, is available here under a CC BY-NC-ND Creative Commons license i.e. you can read it and quote it for non commercial purposes as long as you attribute the source (O'Reilly's book) and don't use it to produce derivative works…"
https://www.strategically.green/building-green-software

[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+09: 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.

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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:lcar...@d.umn.edu


[Issue ends.]

Laura L. Carlson
Information Technology Systems and Services
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth, MN U.S.A. 55812-3009
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/

W3C Invited Expert
Accessibility Guidelines Working Group
https://www.w3.org/groups/wg/ag/participants

Pronouns: she/her/hers