Web Design Update: September 2, 2020

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 19, Issue 10, September 2, 2020.

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

++ISSUE 10 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: COLOR & CONTRAST.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: HTML.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: TOOLS.
11: USABILITY.


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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

WCAG 2.2 Overview and Feedback
By Jared Smith.
"A working draft of version 2.2 of the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines (WCAG) has been published for feedback. WebAIM is thrilled
to see the work on these formative guidelines continuing and we
appreciate the efforts of the W3C's Accessibility Guidelines working
group. Below are WebAIM's plain language summaries of each of the new
proposed success criteria, as well as discussion and our
recommendations…"
https://webaim.org/blog/wcag-2-2-overview-and-feedback/

Coming Next: WCAG 2.2
By Kim Krause Berg.
"…It is backwards compatible to WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1… WCAG 3.0 is on
Deck. It will NOT be backwards compatible… Fasten your seat belts."
https://www.theuserisoutthere.com/2020/08/28/coming-next-wgag-2-2/

Resources for Developing Accessible Cards/Tiles
By Dennis E. Lembree.
"The card pattern (also know as tiles and blades) has become quite
popular over the last several years. There are many accessibility
challenges that may arise quickly when web developers attempt to build
them including…"
http://www.webaxe.org/resources-for-developing-accessible-cards-tiles/

Caption 101: How Do Captions Work on Videos?
By Meryl K. Evans.
"More than 1 billion hours of videos are watched every day on YouTube…"
https://accessly.io/blog/caption-101-how-do-captions-work-on-videos/

Takeaways from Accessibility & Inclusive Design: A Designer's Field Guide
By Deborah Edwards-Onoro.
"In his Accessibility & Inclusive Design: a Designer's Field Guide
online presentation at last week's Aquent Summer Camp, Rob Huddleston,
Design Director at Capital One, gave an overview of accessibility
design basics…"
https://www.lireo.com/takeaways-from-accessibility-inclusive-design-a-designers-field-guide/

Up Your A11y
By Suzanne Aitchison.
"Up Your A11y is run by me, Suzanne, a software developer based in
Edinburgh, Scotland. A few years ago I began to realise how little I
understood about web accessibility, despite working in a mid-level
developer role for some major national brands. In trying to fill this
gap in my knowledge, I found lots of great resources and started
collecting notes and examples…"
https://www.upyoura11y.com/

Inclusive Design: The Big Picture Online Workshop on September 3
By Deborah Edwards-Onoro.
"For many people, accessibility and inclusive design mean the same
thing.But did you know accessibility is only one component of
inclusive design?…"
https://www.lireo.com/inclusive-design-big-picture-online-workshop/

Update on Gutenberg Accessibility Audit (Video)
By Joe Dolson.
"I will present an update on the progress made on the Gutenberg
(WordPress) Accessibility Audit. This is very up to the minute…"
https://2020.wpcampus.org/schedule/update-on-gutenberg-accessibility-audit/#video

Expert Witnesses in Web Accessibility Cases (Part 2)
By Ken Nakata.
"…the requirement for the plaintiff to suffer an injury takes an
interesting turn in web accessibility cases because it really hinges
on the nature of the plaintiff's disabilities. And this affects a lot
of the issues that a plaintiff can allege in their complaint-- and
what their expert witness can testify about…"
https://convergeaccessibility.com/2020/08/31/expert-witnesses-in-web-accessibility-cases-part-2/

Innovation & Accessibility at West Valley College
By Kristopher Nelson.
"…TRE Legal Practice worked on behalf of two blind college students to
reach a settlement agreement with West Valley College, using an
alternative to lawsuits called structured negotiations…"
https://www.trelegal.com/posts/innovation-accessibility-at-west-valley-college/

West Valley College Settlement Agreement (PDF, redacted)
https://www.trelegal.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Public-West-Valley-Settlement-Agreement-ACCESSIBLEREDACTED-1.pdf


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Short Note on content-visibility: hidden
By Steve Faulkner.
"content-visibility is a new property defined in the draft CSS
Containment Module Level 2 specification. It has been implemented in
Chrome 85, you can read about its glory in content-visibility: the new
CSS property that boosts your rendering performance. What I am
interested in is how it is exposed to screen readers and other
assistive technology…"
https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2020/08/25/short-note-on-content-visibility-hidden/

Proportional Resizing with CSS Variables
By Ahmad Shadeed.
"For this snippet, I want to share with you something I do while
resizing elements in the browser DevTools…"
https://ishadeed.com/snippet/proportional-resizing-css-variables/

Why CSS ::before Doesn't Work on Inputs and Images
By Šime Vidas.
"The CSS ::before and ::after pseudo-elements cannot be added to text
inputs and images because these elements are 'replaced elements,' a
special category defined in the Rendering section of the HTML
Standard…"
https://webplatform.news/issues/2020-08-26

The Thing With Leading in CSS
By Matthias Ott.
"The spacing between individual elements of a website and, in
particular, the vertical spacing, has been a regular matter of debate
between web designers and developers"
https://matthiasott.com/notes/the-thing-with-leading-in-css

Gettin' Foldy with the Dual-screen Web (Part I)
By Dave Rupert.
"Making my first dual-screen web app…"
https://daverupert.com/2020/07/gettin-foldy-with-the-dual-screen-web-part-i/


+03: COLOR & CONTRAST.

Alternatives to Low-Contrast Text (Video)
By Katie Sherwin.
"If the foreground color (the actual words) is too similar to the
background color, legibility suffers, and users can't read your copy.
Simple tweaks make websites much easier to read."
https://www.nngroup.com/videos/alternatives-low-contrast-text/


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

How to Handle Bad Data
By Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis.
"…The same concern about data integrity applies to data derived from
UX research…In most research, one bad apple won't spoil the bunch, but
if there are a lot of bad apples, you've got to find them and get them
out of the barrel, or you won't be able to trust your analysis."
https://measuringu.com/how-to-handle-bad-data/

How Professionals Moderate Usability Tests
By Rolf Molich, Chauncey Wilson, Carol M. Barnum, Danielle Cooley,
Steve Krug, Chris LaRoche, Beth A. Martin, Jonathan Patrowicz, and
Brian Traynor.
"…The purpose of the study is to investigate the approaches to
moderation used by experienced professionals. Based on this work, we
present our analysis of some of the characteristics that distinguish
good from poor moderation…"
https://uxpajournal.org/moderate-usability-tests/

On the Usage of Cronbach's Alpha to Measure Reliability of UX Scales
By Martin Schrepp.
"…In this paper, I show that there are some UX specific issues to use
Cronbach's Alpha as a measure for scale reliability…"
https://uxpajournal.org/cronbachs-alpha-reliability-ux-scales/


+05: EVENTS.

Accessibility Champions from Zero to Hero
September 8, 2020.
Online.
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/accessibility-champions-from-zero-to-hero-tickets-113481084980

Back to School and Virtual Accessibility from Cornell
September 9, 2020.
Online.
https://register.yangtaninstitute.org/register/index.cfm?event=7896

UX STRAT
September 15-16, 2020.
Online.
https://uxstrat.com/usa/

BCS Foundation Certificate in User Experience
Starts September 15, 2020.
Online.
https://www.userfocus.co.uk/training/bcs-foundation.html

W3C Workshop on Web and Machine Learning
September 16, 22, 23, and 29, 2020.
Online
https://www.w3.org/2020/06/machine-learning-workshop/

WAI-Tools Open Meeting
September 22, 2020.
Online
https://www.w3.org/WAI/about/projects/wai-tools/third-open-meeting/

The Good, The Bad And Ugly Of Prototyping
October 1, 2020.
Online
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/smashing-tv/good-bad-ugly-prototyping/


+06: HTML.

I Was Wrong About How to Create Accessible Subtitles
By Chris Ferdinandi.
"Back in July, I wrote about how to create accessible subtitles using
the [role="doc-subtitle"] attribute. I was wrong…"
https://gomakethings.com/i-was-wrong-about-how-to-create-accessible-subtitles/


+07: JAVASCRIPT.

ARIA: Poison or Antidote?
By Aaron Leventhal.
"How lying to screen readers cures accessibility, when it doesn't rub
salt in it…"
https://web.dev/aria-poison-or-antidote/

radEventListener: a Tale of Client-side Framework Performance
By Jeremy Wagner.
"React is popular, popular enough that it receives its fair share of
criticism. Yet, this criticism of React isn't completely unwarranted…"
https://css-tricks.com/radeventlistener-a-tale-of-client-side-framework-performance/

Just How Much Faster is Vanilla JS than Frameworks?
By Chris Ferdinandi.
"…takeaways are clear: If you can get away with just vanilla JS, it
will give you the best experience, period. If you need state-based UI,
Preact is not just smaller than React, but far more performant, too."
https://gomakethings.com/just-how-much-faster-is-vanilla-js-than-frameworks/

How to Find Specific Items in an Array with Vanilla JS
By Chris Ferdinandi.
"Today, we're going to look at two different approaches for finding
specific items in an array. Let's dig in…"
https://gomakethings.com/how-to-find-specific-items-in-an-array-with-vanilla-js/

The Radium Craze
By Eric W. Bailey.
"…A five page marketing website may not need a Single Page Application
approach. Consider what you're trying to do, how you're going to do
it, and how you treat the people that help you get there."
https://ericwbailey.design/writing/the-radium-craze.html


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Calculating the Pollution Cost of Website Analytics (Part 3)
By Gerry McGovern.
"…The most substantial pollution from Google Analytics comes from the
processing and analysis of the data…
https://gerrymcgovern.com/calculating-the-pollution-cost-of-website-analytics-part-3/

RFC8890: The Internet is for End Users
By Mark Nottingham.
"The Internet Architecture Board (IAB) has published RFC8890, The
Internet is for End Users, arguing that the Internet Engineering Task
Force (IETF) should ground its decisions in what's good for people who
use the Internet, and that it should take positive steps to achieve
that. Why does this need to be said? Is it going too far? Who else
could they favour, and why should you care? As author of the RFC and a
member of the IAB that passed it, here are my thoughts…"
https://www.mnot.net/blog/2020/08/28/for_the_users

Revisiting Adaptive Design, a Lost Design Movement
By Matt Webb.
"I was reminded today of Dan Hill's work in the early 2000s on
Adaptive Design - and it feels to me like this movement, focused on
re-use, modularity, and unintended customisation, is one worth
revisiting, almost 20 years on. I'll cover some history and then talk
about why this matters.…"
http://interconnected.org/home/2020/08/26/adaptive_design

Design has an Empathy Problem: White Men Can't Design for Everyone
By Jesse Weaver.
"With Design Thinking, IDEO and others commodified 'empathy' and laid
claim to the idea that any person can design for anyone else,
regardless of how different their life circumstances might be…The idea
that anyone can design for anyone else gives license for designers to
believe that they have some special ability to objectively understand
another person. As Design Thinking has spread, more and more companies
take this as a justification to ignore the diversity of their teams.
After all, with Design Thinking, even mostly white mostly male design
teams can design for anyone on the planet simply by 'empathizing' with
them…"
https://uxdesign.cc/design-has-an-empathy-problem-white-men-cant-design-for-everyone-4eef12f0f2bc

"Design Thinking": Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global
Labor Hierarchies
By Lilly Irani.
"Science Studies scholars have shown how what counts as
'technological' creativity - both in cultural practice and in STS
analytics - is shaped by histories of race, colonialism, and gender…"
https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/29638/html


+09: TOOLS.

WAI-ARIA Usage
By Gez Lemon.
"Add the WAI-ARIA usage bookmarlet to evaluate document conformance
requirements for use of ARIA attributes in HTML and allowed ARIA
roles, states, and properties…"
https://thepaciellogroup.github.io/WAI-ARIA-Usage/WAI-ARIA_usage.html


+10: USABILITY.

Virtual Tours: High Interaction Cost, Moderate Usefulness
By Page Laubheimer.
"Virtual tours are an occasionally useful secondary tool for checking
on specific details, but most users find them to be high effort, slow,
and of limited value."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/virtual-tours/

COVID-19 Has Changed Your Users
By Kate Moran.
"People's behaviors and preferences have shifted. Research will help
you figure out how your users have changed and how your designs need
to adapt."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/covid-changed-users/

Baymard Update: 117 New 'Mobile UX' Guidelines and 9,000+ Mobile
Examples Uncovered During 2020
By Christian Holst.
"…This article provides you with a short summary of our latest UX
research initiatives…"
https://baymard.com/blog/mobile-ux-research-update-2020

UX Practitioners Adjusting to Post-Pandemic World (Video)
By Jakob Nielsen.
"The field of user experience must adjust to the challenges (and
associated opportunities) created by the pandemic and the way the
world economy is changing."
https://www.nngroup.com/videos/ux-post-pandemic/

Make Me Think
By Jim Nielsen.
"…The removal of all friction should't be a goal. Making things easy
and making things hard should be a design tool, employed to aid the
end user towards their loftiest goals…"
https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2020/make-me-think/

Positive Developments but Challenges Still Ahead: A Survey Study on UX
Professionals' Work Practices
By Yavuz Inal, Torkil Clemmensen, Dorina Rajanen, Netta Iivari, Kerem
Rizvanoglu, and Ashok Sivaji.
"This paper describes and gives an overview of User Experience (UX)
professionals' work practices-their environment, practices, tools, and
challenges…"
https://uxpajournal.org/ux-professionals-work-practices/

Website Optimization Measures, Part X
By Jens Oliver Meiert.
"This is part of a series about website improvements. How it works? I
casually talk about some of the latest changes to my personal
websites, to share ideas but also to validate assumptions. Let's go…"
https://meiert.com/en/blog/optimization-measures-10/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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

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:lcar...@d.umn.edu


[Issue ends.]