Web Design Update: July 1, 2026

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 27, Issue 01, July 1, 2026.

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

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: JAVASCRIPT.
06: MISCELLANEOUS.
07: NAVIGATION.
08: TOOLS.
09: USABILITY.
10: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.
11: XML.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

That Final 1% Can Make a Bigger Difference Than You Think (Video)
By International Association of Accessibility Professionals.
"…you would assume from going to 100 to 99, you would only lose 1% of
its understandability, but it's actually much more severe. So even if
a tool is 95% accurate at translation, you might be losing 40% of the
actual understandability of it, right? So that's a really interesting
nuance, but I think the same can be applied to alt text…"
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KIww9u9pGGw

The Myth of the Difficult User with Angela Fowler (Video)
By Accessibility Talks.
"Users are often labeled as 'difficult' when they struggle with a
product or process. In reality, those users are early warning signals,
exposing accessibility and usability issues before they impact a
broader audience."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxxhTB69_dE

A11y 101 - 3.2.4 Consistent Identification
By Nat Tarnoff.
"…It's about building trust through predictability…"
https://tarnoff.info/2026/06/29/a11y-101-3-2-4-consistent-identification/

Clickable Table Rows Are a Bad Idea
By Martin Underhill.
"…Clickable table rows can be used for all sorts of things: opening a
modal, revealing more rows, or taking the user to a new page. Whatever
they do, making the whole row clickable is a problem. To understand
why, let's walk through how we might approach it…"
https://www.tempertemper.net/blog/clickable-table-rows-are-a-bad-idea

Designing for People With Reading Disabilities
By Grace Snow.
"…Reading disabilities have nothing to do with intelligence…"
https://tetralogical.com/blog/2026/06/25/designing-for-reading-disabilities/

How (Not To) Name Things
By Erik Kroes.
"…A name is supposed to help you identify something. It sets it apart
from other things of the same kind. HTML already has something to tell
you what kind the object/element is. That is what semantics do…"
https://www.erikkroes.nl/blog/how-not-to-name-things/

How To Scale Digital Accessibility With Design Systems
By Equal Entry.
"…When accessibility is baked into the foundation of a design system,
it becomes a natural part of every project…"
https://equalentry.com/how-to-scale-accessibility/

Word and PowerPoint Accessibility Evaluation Guide
By WebAIM.
"This guide for reviewing and repairing accessibility issues in
Microsoft Office 365 has recently been updated."
https://webaim.org/resources/evaloffice/

Digital Accessibility Quick Cards
By University of Washington.
These Digital Accessibility Quick Cards provide practical,
easy-to-follow guidance for creating inclusive and usable content in
Microsoft Office applications. Designed for quick reference, these
one-page guides help make documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and
emails more accessible to all members of the UW community.
https://www.washington.edu/accesstech/quick-cards/

How I Limit Overwhelm When Auditing
By Serene Mishteler.
"…Instead of thinking 'I need to audit this whole page,' I now think
'I'm just looking at headings right now…Small steps reduce overwhelm.
Small steps build momentum. Small steps get audits done…"
https://intopia.digital/articles/how-i-limit-overwhelm-when-auditing/

Bringing the Automated Scanning Series Together (Part 4)
By Jeff Singleton.
"…A scanning tool reports. It does not decide…"
https://convergeaccessibility.com/2026/06/25/automated-scanning-wrap-up/

Teach Access Courses (Videos)
By Teach Access.
https://www.youtube.com/@teachaccess/courses

Accessible Document Sharing: How We Share Documents is Important For
Accessibility
By Duncan Edwards.
"…The barrier isn't the document. It's the way it has been designed and shared…"
https://disabilityhorizons.com/2026/06/accessible-document-sharing-how-we-share-documents-is-important-for-accessibility/

The "Why" Behind the "What": Why True Alt-Text Excellence Requires a Human Touch
By Caleigh Clements.
"…AI may describe the 'what,' but we describe the 'why,' which is what
end users need to understand the doc as a whole…"
https://www.grackledocs.com/en/why-true-alt-text-excellence-requires-a-human-touch/

Accessibility Isn't Built into AI, And That's a Problem
By Ricky Onsman.
"…Underrepresented in Tech provides a free database built with the
goal of helping people find new opportunities in tech, demystifying
diversity, & ending underrepresentation in tech. Among other things,
it also hosts a weekly podcast of the same name. This week the
co-hosts Samah Nasr and Michelle Frechette included a discussion of
points raised in my articles The Impact of AI on Digital Accessibility
Part I and Part II…"
https://onsman.com/accessibility-isnt-built-into-ai-and-thats-a-problem/

Google Built Antigravity for Everyone Except People Who Need It
By Kessler West.
"…If AI can't handle the accessibility requirements that affect more
than 2.5 billion people worldwide, the promised productivity gains
become technical debt…"
https://silktide.com/blog/google-antigravity-accessibility-issues/

From Struggle to Success: Context-Aware Guidance for Screen Reader
Users in Computer Use
By Nan Chen, Jing Lu, Zilong Wang, Luna K. Qiu, Siming Chen,and Yuqing Yang.
"…AI assistants cannot replace good accessibility design…"
https://dl.acm.org/doi/full/10.1145/3772318.3790661

Accessibility Guidelines in Modern Digital Systems: A Comprehensive
Review of WCAG 2.1
By Ahmet Toprak.
"…Accessibility cannot be fully achieved through rule-based validation
alone; it requires iterative evaluation, continuous refinement, and
active involvement of users with diverse abilities…"
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/408115675_ACCESSIBILITY_GUIDELINES_IN_MODERN_DIGITAL_SYSTEMS_A_COMPREHENSIVE_REVIEW_OF_WCAG_21

WCAG: Pass, Fail or Depends? with Patrick H. Lauke and Peter
Krautzberger (Podcast in German)
By Working Draft.
"…We're talking to Patrick H. Lauke… and Peter Krautzberger… about the
WCAG, their Success Criteria and the question of why a standard that
seems very clear at first glance often leaves a lot of room for
interpretation in practice…"
https://workingdraft.de/718/

Accessibility Barriers Across Swedish Public-Sector Websites (PDF)
By Fardin Hakimi and Rahmat Surakat.
"This study examines accessibility barriers in Swedish public-sector
websites using a taxonomy-driven, cross-domain analytical approach…"
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:2079967/FULLTEXT01.pdf

The Deadline Moved. The Work Continues.
By Jena Fahlbush and Rob Carr.
"…Regardless of the compliance deadline, we know that the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Level 2.1 AA is the minimum
requirement…"
https://ncademi.org/blog/the-deadline-moved-the-work-continues/

WCAG 3.0 Will Create a Governance Problem Most Organizations Aren't Ready For
By Nicolas Steenhout.
"…Make sure leadership knows a transition period is coming and
understands the difference between meeting a legal requirement and
following where the field is going. Look at how your policies,
contracts, procurement processes, and governance documents define
accessibility, and whether they pin it to a version in a way that will
age badly. Check whether accessibility is written down anywhere as an
organizational practice or only ever measured as a technical result.
And get your program ready to explain its decisions, not just hand
over test results…"
https://nicolas-steenhout.com/wcag-3-transition-phase/

ASAN Opposes the Department of Justice's Delay to Digital Accessibility
By Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN).
"…Aside from the legal requirement under Title II for public entities
to make their services, programs, and activities accessible to
individuals with disabilities, our community deserves to have access
to all facets of society, including those provided online…"
https://autisticadvocacy.org/2026/06/asan-opposes-the-department-of-justices-delay-to-digital-accessibility/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Your Grid Lanes Will Likely Fail WCAG 2.4.3
By Manuel Matuzović.
"…As you can see, the visual order no longer matches the tab order…"
https://www.matuzo.at/blog/2026/grid-lanes-accessibility

Modern CSS Theming With light-dark(), contrast-color(), and Style Queries
By Una Kravets.
"…I've been playing with a combination of new CSS features that,
together, form a really nice dynamic theming system. This technique
creates themed components with shadows in light mode that swap out to
glowing borders in dark mode, and text that's always readable against
its dynamic background color. All in CSS…"
https://una.im/modern-css-theming/


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Kick the Bots Out of Your Survey Data
By Rachel Banawa.
"Learn to spot and filter out survey bots' responses before analysis
so fake data doesn't distort your findings."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/survey-bots/

Your New UX Habit: Establishing Baselines for Impact
By Taylor Dykes and Pavel Samsonov.
"Gather baseline metrics before starting a project so your team can
demonstrate its impact"
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/establishing-baselines/

Storytelling in User Research (Video)
By Maria Rosala.
Storytelling isn't just for communicators - it's central to user
research. Stories help uncover insights, make findings intelligible,
and drive team action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8OJd4tpMoM

UX Data in Spreadsheets: Cleaning and Organizing (Video)
By Rachel Banawa.
"Messy survey data can really mess up your analysis efforts -
duplicate entries, inconsistent formatting, missing values that could
skew your entire analysis…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAisWi2TStA


+04: EVENTS.

Accessibility, Ethics and AI (Teach Access)
August 5, 2026.
Online
https://cdt.org/event/teach-access-alumni-network-meetup-accessibility-ethics-ai/

Virtual UX Training
August 17-28, 2026.
Online
https://www.nngroup.com/training/august/

Accessible Programming in Memes: High-Impact Strategies for Developers
August 20, 2026.
Online
https://www.accessibilityassociation.org/webinar/a16IV00000Ba0JJYAZ/wbn0295

Web Directions UX Australia
August 27-28, 2026.
Melbourne, Australia
https://webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

SmashingConf Freiburg
September 7-10, 2026.
Online and Freiburg, Germany
https://smashingconf.com/freiburg-2026


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

ARIA, Anti-Patterns, and You
By David Bushell.
"…Even if ARIA was fully supported (it's not) the APG still wouldn't
be a 'best practice' guide. 'Best practice' is not using ARIA at all…"
https://dbushell.com/2026/06/26/aria-anti-patterns-and-you/


+06: MISCELLANEOUS.

Welcome to the Scott O'hara Show
By Steve Faulkner.
"Scott and I have been friends and collaborators on web standards work
for years. We used to work together at TPG, before he moved on to
Microsoft…"
https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2026/06/29/welcome-to-the-scott-ohara-show/

Web Standards at the Web Engines Hackfest
By Brian Kardell and Eric A. Meyer.
"Igalia's Brian Kardell and Eric Meyer chat with W3C interim CEO
Dominique Hazael-Massieux about Web Standards, the W3C, the Web
Engines Hackfest and the larger web ecosystem…"
https://www.igalia.com/chats/episode-100

Wolfgang Oels (Ecosia) - For A Better Web (Podcast)
By Bruce Lawson.
"In this episode, Bruce's victim is Wolfgang Oels, Chief Operating
Officer of Ecosia. We discuss the importance of Digital Sovereignty,
the new European search index that Ecosia co-founded called the
European Search Perspective, and Wolfgang's
so-crazy-it-just-might-work scheme to buy Chrome for 1 Euro, and save
the planet as a result."
https://vivaldi.com/blog/wolfgang-oels-ecosia-for-a-better-web/

Do You Know How Many Websites You Have?
By Sophie Count.
"Creating an inventory of your web estate is essential to getting your
digital sprawl under control."
https://clearleft.com/thinking/do-you-know-how-many-websites-you-have

AI and Liability
By Bruce Schneier.
"Earlier this month, a German court ruled that Google is liable for
its AI search summaries…AI agents are agents of the person or
organization that deploys them-and should be treated by the law as
such.'"
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/06/ai-and-liability.html


+07: NAVIGATION.

The Accessibility Tree Is How AI Agents Read Your Site and It's Breaking
By Slobodan Manic.
"…The accessibility tree decides whether an AI agent can read and act
on your page…More ARIA correlates with more errors, not fewer…"
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/the-accessibility-tree-is-how-ai-agents-read-your-site-its-breaking/578171/


+09: TOOLS.

Dyslexia Simulator - How Reading Can Feel
By Joshua Hori.
"An interactive, accessible simulation of how some people with
dyslexia describe experiencing text. A modern fork of Victor Widell's
2016 demo, with extra perception modes…"
https://jdhori.github.io/dyslexia-simulator/

Why I Built Three New Accessibility Bookmarklets
By Jeff Singleton.
"…The tool gives you the information. You still have to apply judgment…"
https://convergeaccessibility.com/2026/06/29/accessibility-bookmarklets/


+09: USABILITY.

Nothing About Us Without Us: What CRPD at 20 Means for UX
By Raimonda Sidaraite.
"…Accessibility tells us whether something works. Participation
decides what gets built…"
https://uservision.co.uk/thoughts/nothing-about-us-without-us-what-crpd-at-20-means-for-ux


+10: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.

Carbon.txt (Video)
By Chris Adams.
"We can make websites better, one convention at a time. But is this
really necessary? And does it have impact? In this talk, Chris shares
the lessons learned working on carbon.txt, a project led to establish
a convention like robots.txt to discover sustainability data for any
domain. Together we'll cover the changes in the law that led to it
being developed, the growing ecosystem of tools around it, and
examples of real world use in open source projects, to solve concrete
problems related to understanding the environmental impact of digital
services.…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_QFBPvfw8g

The Sustainable Web, Engineered (Video)
By Ines Akrap.
"…In this talk, Ines makes the case that sustainable front-end
engineering isn't something new to learn. It's what good engineering
has always looked like. We just didn't have the word for it. We'll
look at the decisions that carry the most weight, the difference
between shipping code and building something with intention, and what
the web could look like when this way of thinking stops being
optional…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DU9yfMMS7bg

One Small Step for Web Kind (Video)
By Tom Greenwood.
"…In this talk Tom shares his experience and thoughts on how, even
when we feel small in the face of global challenges and big tech
corporations, we all can make a meaningful difference every day…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JgoOC7jESM

Panel Discussion (Video)
By Jarijn Nijkamp.
"Panel discussion about digital sustainability, with Chris Adams, Ines
Akrap, and Tom Greenwood, hosted by Smashing's Jarijn…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptTKuh8vcto

AI and Greener Choices
By Hidde de Vries.
"…Often, using AI, and especially generative AI, is like going to your
local corner shop using a helicopter…"
https://hidde.blog/ai-greener-choices/

Environment Variables (Podcast)
By Chris Adams.
Modelling a path to Fossil Free Internet with Tom Brown
"Chris Adams is joined by special guest Dr. Tom Brown from TU Berlin
to explore how modelling can help build a fossil free internet and
power grid. They discuss Google's 24/7 carbon free energy goals, the
growing impact of data centres on electricity systems, and how
investments in clean energy technologies could accelerate global
decarbonisation. Along the way, Tom shares why open source energy
modelling is helping shape a more transparent and sustainable energy
future…"
https://shows.acast.com/environment-variables/episodes/modelling-a-path-to-fossil-free-internet-with-tom-brown


+11: XML.

What's Missing From SVG
By Patrick Brosset.
"Developers love SVG's potential, but they feel it is trapped between
HTML/CSS integration gaps, poor performance, and a lack of evolution"
https://patrickbrosset.com/articles/2026-06-22-whats-missing-from-svg/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+12: 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.


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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.]