Web Design Update: May 6, 2025

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 25, Issue, May 6, 2025.

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

++ISSUE 45 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
03: EVENTS.
04: HTML.
05: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: TOOLS.
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.

Potential Accessibility Issues of Floating Animations on Webpages and
Mobile Apps
By Bogdan Cerovac.
"Recently I did an audit of a webpage rich with animations. And needed
to warn people about them as sometimes they destroy the experience if
we are not careful."
https://cerovac.com/a11y/2025/05/potential-accessibility-issues-of-floating-animations-on-webpages-and-mobile-apps/

Focus Start Position
By Martin Underhill.
"What's it called when you click somewhere on a webpage? Most people
either won't care, either because it doesn't seem to do anything, or
they can't click because they don't use a mouse or trackpad. But I
care because I use it when testing the accessibility of web pages…"
https://www.tempertemper.net/blog/focus-priming

How Keyboard Testing Improves Digital Accessibility
By Michael Harshbarger.
"Designing digital experiences that work for everyone can start with a
few simple, actionable steps you can take right now, with no complex
tools or advanced training required. One of the most impactful?
Keyboard testing…"
https://www.deque.com/blog/how-keyboard-testing-improves-digital-accessibility/

Keyboard Navigation: Ensuring Usability Without a Mouse
By Michael Beck.
"…This blog post explores why keyboard accessibility is critical,
common pitfalls, and best practices for creating a seamless experience
for keyboard users…"
https://afixt.com/keyboard-navigation-ensuring-usability-without-a-mouse/

Testing Methods: Live Captions
By Dennis Deacon.
"1.2.4 Captions (Live) is a Level AA conformance level Success
Criterion. It requires Captions to be provided for all live audio
content in synchronized media…"
https://www.dennisdeacon.com/web/accessibility/testing-methods-live-captions/

PDFs, Non-HTML Documents, and Accessibility
By Whitney Lewis.
"PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoints, and Excel spreadsheets are
non-HTML documents. Non-HTML documents have special accessibility
considerations. Making these documents accessible is usually extra
work than making an HTML webpage accessible, which is why we suggest
using HTML webpages whenever possible…"
https://blog.pope.tech/2022/05/03/pdfs-non-html-documents-and-accessibility/

Remediate a PDF for Accessibility Using Adobe's Accessibility Checker
By Whitney Lewis.
"Adobe Acrobat Pro's Accessibility Checker is a great way to review
and fix PDF accessibility issues…"
https://blog.pope.tech/2025/04/30/remediate-a-pdf-for-accessibility-using-adobes-accessibility-checker/

How to Use Adobe Acrobat's Fix Reading Order Tool
By Whitney Lewis.
"An important part of PDF accessibility is its tags and reading order.
In this video, learn how to use Adobe Acrobat Pro's Fix reading order
tool to check and fix a PDF's tags and reading order…"
https://blog.pope.tech/2025/04/30/how-to-use-adobe-acrobats-fix-reading-order-tool/

Creating Accessible PDFs: A Guide to Inclusive Documents
By Michael Beck.
"In this post, we'll break down what makes a PDF accessible, common
pitfalls, and best practices to ensure your documents work for all
users…"
https://afixt.com/creating-accessible-pdfs-a-guide-to-inclusive-documents/

Five Common PDF Accessibility Mistakes and How to Fix Them
By Josh Crawford.
"Making PDFs accessible is essential for ensuring your content reaches
everyone who needs it. This article identifies five common PDF
accessibility mistakes and provides practical solutions to fix them,
helping you create more inclusive digital documents…"
https://www.digitalaccesstraining.com/pages/articles?p=five-common-pdf-accessibility-mistakes-and-how-to-fix-them

Document Accessibility - Is There a Short Cut? (IAAP EU WAD Event 2024) (Video)
By Christopher Patnoe, Hector Minto, Rob Haverty, and Shilpi Kapoor.
"Representatives from companies behind document software discuss what
can be done to make the trillions of documents out there accessible
with reasonable effort. The Dutch government will present a tool to
supports automatic remediation. Is there a future of document
accessibility, and in that case, how does it look?…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWF1GOcF5J0

Advancing Accessibility Standards
By Rachael Bradley Montgomery.
"We are excited to share the Digital Accessibility Framework (DAF) - a
top-down look at the needs of people with disabilities within digital
environments. Our hope is this model will advance accessibility
standards and research…"
https://accessiblecommunity.org/blog/advancing-a11y-standards/

Automated Accessibility Test Tools Find Even Less Than Expected
By Robert Dodd.
"…Looking at the low scores across all five automated accessibility
test tools that were tried, we may need to add caveats to that claim
of 30%-50% coverage. Perhaps we now say that typical test coverage is
30%-50% of commonly occurring detectable accessibility issues?…"
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/automated-accessibility-test-tools-find-even-less-than-robert-dodd-pk7be/

Tools of the Trade: Accessibility Without the Cost
By Equal Entry.
"This article is based on Jeremy Rivera's talk at A11yNYC. He talked
about how to leverage free accessibility tools to create more
inclusive digital experiences. He explores a variety of powerful,
no-cost resources that help developers, designers, and content
creators identify and resolve accessibility issues efficiently…"
https://equalentry.com/accessibility-tools-without-cost/

Guidance on Applying WCAG 2.2 to Mobile Applications (WCAG2Mobile)
Jan Jaap de Groot, Jamie Herrera, Joe Humbert, Julian
Kittelson-Aldred, and Jon Gibbins editors.
"This document describes how Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
(WCAG) 2.2 [WCAG22] principles, guidelines, and success criteria can
be applied to mobile applications, including native mobile apps,
mobile web apps and hybrid apps using web components inside native
mobile apps. It provides informative guidance (guidance that is not
normative and does not set requirements…"
https://www.w3.org/TR/wcag2mobile-22/

CSUN Recap - Testing Mobile Apps: Tools, Techniques, and Best
Practices - Part 1 (iOS)
By Laurie Pagano, Carolina Crespo, John Lilly.
"Testing mobile apps can be difficult because we can't just inspect
the HTML like we can with websites. We do have a few techniques to
share with you below in our tests. We'll start with testing with a
screen reader, move to using a keyboard for navigation, a color
contrast tool, and finally inspector applications…"
https://www.tpgi.com/csun-recap-testing-mobile-apps-tools-techniques-and-best-practices-part-1-ios/

Building a More Accessible GitHub CLI
By Ryan Hecht & Andrew Feller.
"How do we translate web accessibility standards to command line
applications? This is GitHub CLI's journey toward making terminal
experiences for all developers…"
https://github.blog/engineering/user-experience/building-a-more-accessible-github-cli/

The Accessibility Show #5: Can A.I. Create an Accessible Site? (Video)
By Joe Dolson and Nathan Wrigley.
"…Throughout the episode, Joe shares his expert insights, examining
how AI handled tasks like semantic structuring, keyboard navigation,
and proper use of ARIA labels. He uncovers some of the nuances and
common pitfalls AI encounters in accessibility, offering some lessons
for developers and designers alike…"
https://wpbuilds.com/accessibility/5/

The Accessibility Clock Is Ticking for State Governments
By Nikki Davidson and Noelle Knell.
"State accessibility officers convened at the NASCIO Midyear
Conference with a call to action: State and local governments must
prioritize upgrading their websites to meet impending federal
accessibility deadlines…"
https://www.govtech.com/gov-experience/the-accessibility-clock-is-ticking-for-state-governments

States Drop Constitutional Challenge to Section 504 in Texas v. Kennedy
By Glenda Sims.
"…While the constitutional claim has been dropped, the lawsuit
continues. The remaining legal questions focus on how HHS crafted its
2024 updates to the Section 504 regulation, particularly how these
updates apply in practice to public programs, digital services, and
healthcare settings…"
https://www.deque.com/blog/states-drop-constitutional-challenge-to-section-504-in-texas-v-kennedy/

Legal Update: April 2025
By Ken Nakata.
"April was a much busier month than March. There were a bunch of new
developments, both at the beginning of the month and the end of the
month. As there is a lot of ground to cover, let's hop in and get to
it…"
https://convergeaccessibility.com/2025/05/05/legal-update-april-2025/


+02: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Analyze Usability Test Data in 4 Steps
By Maria Rosala.
"Analyze with confidence by collecting relevant data, critically
assessing it, and forming testable explanations."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/analyze-usability-data/

See What Users See: Enhancing User-Centered Product Innovation with Eye Tracking
By Soussan Djamasbi.
"In today's digital economy, the demand for enhanced user experience
is a key driver of user-centered product innovations…"
https://uxpajournal.org/see-what-users-see-enhancing-user-centered-product-innovation-with-eye-tracking/

Grading Scales for the UX-Lite
By Jim Lewis and Jeff Sauro.
"…In this article, we discuss standard and curved grading scales for
the UX-Lite and when to use them…"
https://measuringu.com/grading-scales-for-the-ux-lite/


+03: EVENTS.

Designing Web Content Accessibly from Center for Accessible Technology (ATAC)
May 14, 2025.
Online
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/z74iGVdbSM2rnnLCoCkl3Q#/registration

Basic Web Auditing for Accessibility (with Free tools) from ATAC
May 29, 2025.
Online
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/HB-h93cbT7yOkq9yZi98VQ#/registration

San Diego Accessibility & Inclusive Design June Meetup
June 12, 2025.
Online
https://www.meetup.com/a11ysd/events/307069494/

The ADA and Your Content: How To Be Compliant
June 17, 2025.
Online
https://www.prsa.org/event/2025/06/17/default-calendar/the-ada-and-your-content-how-to-be-compliant-wbnr2508

The UX Conference
September 13, 2025.
Online and London, England, United Kingdom
https://theuxconf.com


+04: HTML.

The cite Element
By Heydon Pickering.
"…in HTML5, it's the title of the work, and only the title of the
work, that should form the citation, falling between the <cite> and
</cite> tags…I don't think you should worry too much about what goes
in your <cite> elements. For some elements, like <a>, it's imperative
to use appropriate wording. That's becauses links can be aggregated,
with their labels taken out of context. There's also an art to writing
search-engine optimized link text. However, <cite> doesn't have this
kind of dimensionality. As far as I'm aware, there aren't even any
screen readers that differentiate <cite> from its surrounding text.
This is the case with the majority of text-level (inline) elements…"
https://heydonworks.com/article/the-cite-element/


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

Event Handling in JAWS and NVDA
By James Edwards.
"When you're scripting for a screen reader, then you're scripting for
the browser, with exactly the same level of JavaScript support. JAWS
with Chrome, or NVDA with Firefox, are simply Chrome or Firefox being
mediated by external software. However complications can arise with
event handling, because screen readers intercept events, and don't
necessarily pass them on to the browser. Even then, events don't
always match the input type, since desktop screen readers are
typically controlled with a keyboard, yet keyboard actions might fire
mouse events."
https://www.tpgi.com/event-handling-in-jaws-and-nvda/

K.I.S.S. ARIA
By Nat Tarnoff.
"I sat down to review some code with my colleagues. It was clear that
each of these solutions was heavily over-engineered. Each used custom
web components, React, Angular, or other framework, and even basic
HTML with aria added. All of them should get slimmed down and work to
reduce or remove ARIA…"
https://tarnoff.info/2025/05/05/k-i-s-s-aria/

Celebrating with The Perfect Toast
By Ian Lloyd.
"…I tried to create a script/pattern that adapted based on the content
that is being displayed and preferences set by the user, with some
opinionated decisions thrown in for good measure. The appearance
(position/style) of these updates is the same regardless of the
content or timings, but how it's built and exposed changes, as does
the focus behaviour"…"
https://www.tpgi.com/celebrating-with-the-perfect-toast/

Creating a More Accessible Web With Aria Notify
By Evelynn Kaplan and Patrick Brosset.
"…Developers have come to rely on ARIA live regions as a limited
workaround. ARIA Notify is an imperative notification API that's
designed to replace the usage of ARIA live regions, and overcome its
limitations…"
https://blogs.windows.com/msedgedev/2025/05/05/creating-a-more-accessible-web-with-aria-notify/

Disclosures and Accordions
By WebAIM.
"…Disclosures and accordions created using <details> and <summary>
have built-in accessibility. The <summary> element properly functions
like a button, and the expanded state (open or closed) is presented to
assistive technologies. The problems below only occur when other
elements or scripting are used. Disclosures and accordions created
using buttons, JavaScript, and ARIA can be implemented incorrectly and
create accessibility issues. Below are some common issues and how to
address them…"
https://webaim.org/techniques/disclosures/

Converting Values to Strings in JavaScript
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"Converting values to strings in JavaScript is more complicated than
it might seem…"
https://2ality.com/2025/04/stringification-javascript.html

JavaScript, When is this?
By Mat "Wilto" Marquis.
"I spent the first few years of my career regarding this as yet
another aspect of my primarily hunch-driven approach to web
development-which is to say, sometimes it felt like this might be what
I wanted, but if so, it was for reasons I couldn't possibly begin to
understand…"
https://piccalil.li/blog/javascript-when-is-this/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Software Release of WWW Into Public Domain
By CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire).
"The document that officially put the World Wide Web into the public
domain on 30 April 1993."
https://cds.cern.ch/record/1164399/

What is Accessibility Sludge and How to Get Rid of It
By Sheri Byrne-Haber.
"…Removing accessibility sludge requires serious cleaning. That
means…Streamlining approvals and cutting out review loops that don't
add value. Replacing performative reporting with actionable,
transparent data. Creating a single source of truth for standards and
enforcing it across all teams. Don't require an ROI before making
things accessible. Making sure your tools support the work rather than
slow it down. Hiring dedicated staff and giving them the resources to
lead. Allocating budgets proactively, not just when you're in legal
trouble…"
https://buttondown.com/access-ability/archive/what-is-accessibility-sludge-and-how-to-get-rid/

'Dangerous Nonsense': AI-Authored Books About ADHD for Sale on Amazon
By Rachel Hall.
"Experts say online retailer has ethical responsibility to guard
against chatbot-generated work on sensitive topics…"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/may/04/dangerous-nonsense-ai-authored-books-about-adhd-for-sale-on-amazon


+07: TOOLS.

Cap Height View Angle Calculator
By Michael Cooper.
"Determines the cap height of a font, and calculates the font size
needed for that size to fill a given portion of the visual field…"
https://aihal-accessibility.com/tools/cap-height-view-angle-calculator


+08: USABILITY.

What 96 Designers Taught Us About Harm: The Behaviors Around
Considering Harm in Digital Products
By Lexi Namer, Sharon Joines.
"Potential harm within digital product design has long been
underexplored, despite the growing influence that consumer-facing
digital products exert on individuals' daily lives. This paper
presents the methodology and findings from an online survey conducted
with 96 US-based UX- and product-designers working on customer-facing
digital products…"
https://uxpajournal.org/harm-digital-products/

6 Ways Mobile Usability Fails People With Disabilities
By Sam Proulx.
"There's a perception-reality mismatch when it comes to how mobile app
accessibility standards impact digital usability for people with
disabilities…"
https://makeitfable.com/article/mobile-usability-reality-check-for-inclusive-ux/


+09: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.

What if the Key to Better Business Was… Less?
By Lucie Montel.
"I started this year with a mantra. Last December, I was exhausted,
feeling like I was juggling too many things, both professionally and
personally, yet achieving none of them - constantly chasing my to-do
list and frustrated with myself. So over the winter break, I set an
intention for 2025: fewer things, fewer tabs open at once - on my
laptop and in my mind - but doing things well, present and mindful.
Less, but better…"
https://tomgreenwood.substack.com/p/what-if-the-key-to-better-business

[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.


+ SUBSCRIPTION INFO.

WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how
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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.]