Web Design Update: May 22, 2024

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 22, Issue 48, May 22, 2024.

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

++ISSUE 48 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: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: HTML.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.
10: TOOLS.
11: USABILITY.
12: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

The WCAG 3 Working Draft Update Is Ready for Your Review
By Shawn Henry.
"…This draft includes potential outcomes that we are exploring. The final set of outcomes in WCAG 3 will be different from this draft. Outcomes will be edited, added, combined, and removed…"
https://www.w3.org/blog/2024/the-wcag-3-working-draft-update-is-ready-for-your-review/

May 2024 WCAG 3 Working Draft Update
By Rachael Bradley Montgomery.
"The Accessibility Guidelines Working Group (AGWG) has updated the W3C Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 3 Working Draft.This draft includes an updated list of the potential outcomes which we are exploring. The list of outcomes is longer than a listing of Success Criteria list in WCAG 2.2. Why? Because the intent at this stage is to be as inclusive as possible of potential outcomes…"
https://whollyaccessible.org/2024/05/16/may-2024-wcag-3-working-draft-update/

W3C Unveils 174 New Outcomes for WCAG 3.0
By Wilco Fiers.
"…For Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) this year, the W3C is publishing its latest draft of WCAG 3.0, adding 174 new outcomes…"
https://www.deque.com/blog/w3c-unveils-174-new-outcomes-for-wcag-3-0/

GAAD 2024: Accessibility Fundamentals Bootcamp (Video)
By Sharon Goldrup, Emily Lauer, Ryan Bateman.
"Attendees will learn:
* What is digital accessibility and why is it important?
* How do people with disabilities navigate the web?
* How can you champion accessibility to make a difference in your organization today.
* How does the new European Accessibility Act impact your organization and what do you need to do before June 2025?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NaK0iIR3N8

All I Want for GAAD
By Access Armada.
"…This essay is framed as a wishlist of what we think can really move the needle on accessibility…"
https://www.accessarmada.com/blog/all-i-want-for-gaad/

Dark Mode & Accessibility Myth
By Stéphanie Walter.
"Dark mode isn't always better for accessibility, let users chose…"
https://stephaniewalter.design/blog/dark-mode-accessibility-myth-debunked/

Digital Inaccessibility: Blind and Low-Vision People Have Powerful Technology but Still Face Barriers to the Digital World
By Michele McDonnall.
"…The most significant challenges related to assistive technology centered on the inaccessible digital environment: documents, software, websites, graphics and photos…"
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/digital-inaccessibility-blind-low-vision-131440320.html

Inspiration Porn
By Hidde de Vries.
"Just in time for #GAAD, and in the week where we saw OpenAI share a video of a new feature that integrates the GPT-4o model with BeMyEyes to assist blind people, I want to share the definition of 'inspiration porn'…"
https://hidde.blog/links/inspiration-porn/

Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2024: On-Demand Webinars and Videos
By Ricky Onsman.
"…we decided to collect links to a few of them, and add some of the more interesting videos…"
https://www.tpgi.com/global-accessibility-awareness-day-2024-on-demand-webinars-and-videos/

What the Upgrade to WCAG 2.1 Means for Minnesotans
By Minnesota IT Services.
"…2024 is a big year for accessibility in Minnesota because we are updating our accessibility standard to better serve Minnesotans…"
https://mn.gov/mnit/media/blog/?id=38-623917


+02: BOOKS.

* Horton and Sloan, "What Every Engineer Should Know About Digital Accessibility", CRC Press, 2024.


+03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

contrast-color() is a Good Thing, but Also Solving the Problem at the Wrong Layer
By Eric W. Bailey.
"…This circumstance we find ourselves in is what drives my dissatisfaction. It's my hope that in reading this you learn not only about contrast-color(), but also how to interrogate the larger environment it exists in and how it comes to be…"
https://ericwbailey.website/published/contrast-color-is-a-good-thing-but-also-solving-the-problem-at-the-wrong-layer/

The New !important
By Geoff Graham.
"…Those .specificity and .extra-specificity classes sure pop off the page, don't they?…"
https://geoffgraham.me/the-new-css-important/

Beyond CSS Media Queries
By Juan Diego Rodríguez.
"Many of the latest CSS features released in the past several years are designed to write 'smarter' styles that apply when they meet certain conditions, many of which are directly related to responsive design. What does this mean for media queries? Juan Diego Rodriguez explains why media queries still occupy a vital role in responsive layouts; only they are now one tool in a larger toolbox with modern techniques that are best when used together…"
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2024/05/beyond-css-media-queries/


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

You Can Report Percentages With Small Samples, but Should You?
By Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis.
"…Should you report percentages from small sample studies?… Yes, you should. Our experiment of 200 participants comparing the magnitudes of two fractions or two percentages strongly supports the practice of reporting percentages even when sample sizes are small…"
https://measuringu.com/should-you-avoid-reporting-percentages-from-small-sample-studies/

How to Conduct a Heuristic Evaluation (Video)
By Kate Moran.
"Learn how to systematically review your product to find potential usability and experience problems."
https://www.nngroup.com/videos/conduct-heuristic-evaluation/

GAAD 2024 Slovenia - State of E-Commerce Accessibility - a Year Before the New Legislation
By Bogdan Cerovac.
"…I decided to leave automatic accessibility testing out and check half or WCAG 2.1 on A and AA levels manually. As manual audits take time, I decided to limit our analysis to half of it and to only check 20 e-commerce websites that we are quite confident is also made in Slovenia (so we dropped the multinationals operating in Slovenia)…"
https://cerovac.com/a11y/2024/05/gaad-2024-slovenia-state-of-e-commerce-accessibility-a-year-before-the-new-legislation/


+05: EVENTS.

Advanced Web Accessibility with WAI-ARIA, WCAG 2.0, and Section 508 Compliance
May 22-23, 2024.
Online
https://www.gpo.gov/how-to-work-with-us/agency/events-and-training/2024/05/22/gpoevents/advanced-web-accessibility-with-wai-aria-wcag-2.0-and-section-508-compliance

How to Maintain Your Website's Accessibility
May 23, 2024.
Online
https://wearehdk.com/webinars/how-to-maintain-your-websites-accessibility/

Ask the Professionals: Neurodivergence and Accessibility
June 4, 2024.
Online
https://events.humanitix.com/ozewai-online-event-ask-the-professionals-4-june-2024

XML Prague 2024
June 6-8 2024.
Prague, Czech Republic
https://www.xmlprague.cz/

Accessible Documents Webinar
July 23, 2024.
Online
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_QPO8gaesQeKjqCEUNkdSGA#/registration

Closing The Gap
October 21-25, 2024.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.
https://www.closingthegap.com/conference/

SmashingConf Antwerp
October 27-31, 2024.
Online and Antwerp, Belgium
https://smashingconf.com/antwerp-2024


+06: HTML.

The State of HTML 2023
By Devographics.
Results are finally out.
https://2023.stateofhtml.com/en-US
State of HTML 2023 Accessibility Section:
https://2023.stateofhtml.com/en-US/features/accessibility/

I Have Been Reading Through the State of HTML 2023 Results…
By Adrian Roselli.
"…and I am so disappointed in the overall #accessibility efforts - both in the questions and in the code…"
https://mastodon.social/@aard...@toot.cafe/112463551092474238

HTML Web Components (Video)
By Chris Ferdinandi.
Chris' prentation at the The 11ty International Symposium on Making Web Sites Real Good conference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLxJ6PtuF9M&t=17435s


+07: JAVASCRIPT.

A Primer on JavaScript Proxies
By Chris Ferdinandi.
"Today, we’re going to look at JS Proxies: what they are, how they work, and why you might want to use them…"
https://gomakethings.com/a-primer-on-javascript-proxies/

WAI-ARIA: Role=Strong
By Raghavendra Satish Peri.
"The purpose of the strong role is to communicate strong importance, seriousness, or urgency…"
https://www.digitala11y.com/wai-aria-rolestrong/

WAI-ARIA: Role=Deletion
By Raghavendra Satish Peri.
"…A deletion contains content that is marked as removed or content that is being suggested for removal…"
https://www.digitala11y.com/wai-aria-roledeletion/


+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

The Accessibility Community Is Not the Disability Community
By Matt May.
"…You have one group of people who understand it's important, some of whom (one hopes) have their own lived experiences to draw on. But when it gets fed into the PR machine, all the complicated stuff comes out in the wash, and in the end, it's all about how the company helped this group or made that feature. That's what accessibility-community PR feels like to me. It's flat and lifeless, because it's telling the company's story over anyone else's…"
https://buttondown.email/practicaltips/archive/the-accessibility-community-is-not-the-disability/

Responsible Use of AI by Governments: Discussion With OECD, US State Department, and the DTA
By Digital Transformation Agency of the Australian Government.
"…The session emphasised how to maximize the societal benefits of AI, while developing the necessary competencies to minimise risks associated with these solutions. "
https://www.dta.gov.au/blogs/responsible-use-ai-governments-discussion-oecd-us-state-department-and-dta

Slop Is the New Name for Unwanted AI-Generated Content
By Simon Willison.
"…I'm increasingly of the opinion that sharing unreviewed content that has been artificially generated with other people is rude. Slop is the ideal name for this anti-pattern…"
https://simonwillison.net/2024/May/8/slop/

Generative AI Is Totally Shameless. I Want to Be It
By Paul Ford.
"The best thing about brain-melting software like ChatGPT? It doesn't feel remorse…"
https://www.wired.com/story/generative-ai-totally-shameless/


+09: NAVIGATION.

Google Is Redesigning Its Search Engine
By David Pierce.
"…it's AI all the way down / From 'AI Overviews' to automatic categorization, Google is bringing AI to practically every part of the search process…"
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/14/24155321/google-search-ai-results-page-gemini-overview

Google's Broken Link to the Web
By Casey Newton.
"With AI search results coming to the masses, the human-powered web recedes further into the background…"
https://www.platformer.news/google-io-ai-search-sundar-pichai/

Google Now Offers 'Web' Search - and an AI Opt-Out Button / for Some, the New 'Web' Button Will Be the Biggest Improvement in Years.
By Sean Hollister.
"This is not a joke: Google will now let you perform a 'web' search…"
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/14/24074314/google-now-offers-web-search


+10: TOOLS.

Image Accessibility Creator
By Arizona State University.
"…Designed to effortlessly generate alt text and detailed descriptions, as well as extract text from slides and images that are not accessible, our tool simplifies the creation of inclusive content. Just upload your image and hit 'Create Image Details.' Within seconds, you'll see the generated content appear on the right side of the screen. Need to tailor the descriptions further? Easily add more specifics with the 'Add Details' option and generate updated descriptions to perfectly meet your needs. This tool currently utilizes the GPT-4 vision model provided by OpenAI. We are using their API platform, which ensures the data sent is not retained or stored to improve their training or models…"
https://asuo-ai-labs.streamlit.app/Image_Accessibility

Sa11y Bookmarklet
"Sa11y is available as a bookmarklet and can be used in any desktop browser. Sa11y is designed for content authors and focuses on content related issues and successes…"
https://sa11y.netlify.app/bookmarklet/


+11: USABILITY.

Trauma-Informed Design: Leveraging Usability Heuristics on a Social Services Website
By Melissa Eggleston and Lesley-Ann Noel.
"…This paper describes specific ways TI principles can be operationalized using usability heuristics to develop more user-friendly and trauma-informed websites. A case study in design shows how user experience professionals can be more trauma-informed in their work to better serve the general public or users who have experienced trauma…"
https://uxpajournal.org/trauma-informed-design-leveraging-usability-heuristics-on-a-social-services-website/

Hidden vs. Disabled In UX
By Vitaly Friedman.
"Should you hide or disable a feature? You've probably been there before. Here are some considerations for hiding versus disabling, along with possible alternatives to improve UX. An upcoming part of Smart Interface Design Patterns."
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2024/05/hidden-vs-disabled-ux/

Visual Design: Glossary
By Rachel Krause and Therese Fessenden.
"Use this glossary to quickly clarify key terms and concepts related to visual design."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/visual-design-cheat-sheet/


+12: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.  

Web Content Has a Maintenance Problem
By Gerry McGovern.
"…The Web is a launch-and-leave junkyard. And every year the percentage of content there that has simply been left to rot, it grows and grows. And this is what AI is fed on, so it is no surprise AI is a lying machine…"
https://gerrymcgovern.com/web-content-has-a-maintenance-problem/

Is the Planet the Missing Member of Your Project Team?
By Chris How.
"The internet has a dirty secret. The internet is killing the planet. We've designed a ferocious energy-consuming monster…"
https://clearleft.com/thinking/is-the-planet-the-missing-member-of-your-project-team

No Bots Allowed?
By Andy Davies.
"What does a website that doesn't allow bot traffic look like?…"
https://www.wholegraindigital.com/blog/no-bots-allowed/


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+13: 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 to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit:
https://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.]