Web Design Update: September 8, 2026

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 27, Issue 11, September 8, 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: BOOKS.
03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
04: COLOR.
05: EVALUATION & TESTING.
06: EVENTS.
07: HTML.
08: JAVASCRIPT.
09: MISCELLANEOUS.
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.

Evaluating a Success Criterion
By Adrian Roselli.
"…No matter what outcome you find, test everything anyway…"
https://adrianroselli.com/2026/09/evaluating-a-success-criterion.html

How Accessibility Gets Lost Between Base and Product Design Systems
By Anna E. Cook.
"…Divergence without a contract is how accessibility debt accumulates quietly: months later, as a bug report…"
https://zeroheight.com/blog/how-accessibility-gets-lost-between-base-and-product-design-systems/

Neurodivergence: What is it and Why Does it Matter (Video)
By Therese Fessenden.
"Neurodivergent users face executive-function, communication, and sensory challenges. Neuroinclusive design helps all users by focusing on simplicity, clarity, control, support, and co-creation…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss7OpC9V7h4

People Are the Point: Why Cognitive Accessibility Needs to Be Part of Your Design System
By Nathania Gilson.
"…People are the point. The system is how you reach them…"
https://zeroheight.com/blog/people-are-the-point-why-cognitive-accessibility-needs-to-be-part-of-your-design-system/

If You Have to Ask, Is It Accessible?
By George Joeckel.
…"The infrastructure for doing this right already exists…"
https://webaim.org/blog/if-you-have-to-ask-is-it-accessible/

Speech Recognition and Complex Tables With Fields
By Whitney Lewis.
"…Going beyond research and doing human testing is critical…"
https://blog.pope.tech/2026/08/31/speech-recognition-and-complex-tables-with-fields/

What Automated Accessibility Tools Will Never Catch with Tanveer Khan
By Equalize Digital.
"…Automation asks, 'Are there detectable technical issues?' Manual testing asks, 'Does this actually work when someone uses it?…"
https://accessibilitycraft.com/179-what-automated-accessibility-tools-will-never-catch-with-tanveer-khan/

How Many Pages Is Enough in an Accessibility Audit?
By Karl Groves.
"…If the objective is statistically defensible measurement, use a statistically defensible sampling method. If the objective is to inform remediation, build the sample around the things that are likely to produce different accessibility problems…"
https://afixt.com/how-many-pages-is-enough-in-an-accessibility-audit/

Why Testing Every Website Maybe Be Unnecessary (Video)
By CANAXESS.
"…When you have dozens of websites to test, the smartest accessibility strategy may be to test less and learn more…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuXPh-HenMQ


+02: BOOKS.

* Williams, Michele A. "Accessible UX Research", Smashing Magazine, 2026.


+03: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Why I Don't Recommend Tailwind CSS
By Andros Fenollosa.
"…Before choosing it, learn CSS. Then decide with knowledge…"
https://en.andros.dev/blog/af3ee191/why-i-dont-recommend-tailwind-css/


+04: COLOR.

Accessible Color Choices Are About So Much More Than Just Contrast
By Sheri Byrne-Haber.
"…A palette can pass every WCAG contrast check and still be unusable for large groups of people…"
https://buttondown.com/access-ability/archive/accessible-color-choices-are-about-so-much-more/


+05: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Nine Design Fixes for Your UX Research Reports
By Fernanda Villalobos and Jeff Sauro.
"…The UX research report is an interface…"
https://measuringu.com/nine-design-fixes-for-your-ux-research-reports/


+06: EVENTS.

Live Accessibility Testing with Manuel Matuzović
September 24, 2026.
Online
https://smashingconf.com/online-workshops/workshops/live-accessibility-testing-manuel-matuzovic/

Accessibility in Technology Procurement and Use
October 22, 2026.
Online
https://webaim.org/training/procurement/

Virtual Web Accessibility Training
November 4–5, 2026.
Online
https://webaim.org/training/virtual/

UX Brighton
November 6, 2026.
Brighton, England, United Kingdom
https://uxbri.org/2026


+07: HTML.

Why TalkBack Keeps Switching Accents
By Craig Abbott.
"…WCAG compliance is a floor, not a ceiling. It cannot tell you what the true user experience is actually like…"
https://www.craigabbott.co.uk/blog/2026/why-talkback-keeps-switching-accents/

initial-scale No Longer Needed
By Peter-Paul Koch.
"This is all you need. <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">"
https://quirksmode.org/quirksblog/2026/0902-initial.html

Understanding readonly and aria-readonly
By Russ Weakley.
"…ARIA communicates information to assistive technologies. It does not automatically change how a custom control behaves…Use native HTML whenever possible…"
https://www.maxdesign.com.au/articles/aria-readonly-readonly-explained.html


+08: JAVASCRIPT.

Native HTML and CSS Features That Replaced JavaScript
By Ronalds Vilciņš.
"…Sometimes the best way to improve a script is to delete it."
https://ronaldsvilcins.com/2026/08/30/native-html-and-css-features-that-replaced-javascript/


+09: MISCELLANEOUS.

How Japan Is Rethinking Web Accessibility Without Laws with Makoto Ueki (Video)
By AXSChat.
"A single smile can explain web accessibility better than a thousand audits. Makoto Ueki joins us from Japan to share the moment that changed his career: watching an 80+ year old woman, newly blind, learn to search Google with a screen reader and light up when the results finally appeared. That story sets the tone for a practical, human conversation about why accessible technology matters and how inclusive design turns the web into independence…"
https://vimeo.com/1223148266

Dave (Letorey) Visits the Fire
By Steve Faulkner.
"…accessibility is absolutely key to what we do. But we always have a talk about accessibility because it's very, very important, even though the audience that we've got already know about accessibility, but we have videos that go out into the world and leak. So that's really cool…"
https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2026/09/01/dave-visits-the-fire/

We Used to Log Off
By Wira Indra Kusuma.
"Online used to be a place you could leave. We designed the exit out of it because an exit reads as a leak. Here is why building it back is a design responsibility, and what that means now that AI is dissolving the last seam…"
https://www.doc.cc/articles/we-used-to-log-off

On Artificial Intelligence
By Matt May.
"…The AI industry is a state machine that so far has turned over a trillion dollars of capital and millions of tons of natural resources into lies and heat…"
https://buttondown.com/practicaltips/archive/on-artificial-intelligence/


+10: TOOLS.

Intopia's Accessibility Testing Bookmarklets
By Intopia.
"A bookmarklet is a web browser bookmark with JavaScript commands that add new features. These small JavaScript snippets are stored as a bookmark URL and executed when clicked…"
https://intopia.github.io/exercise/testing-bookmarklets-intopia.html


+11: USABILITY.

We Still Need Long-Form Copy (Video)
By Taylor Dykes.
"With attention-spans dwindling, why do we still use long-form copy? Because some things are complex, require trust, and need SEO & AEO benefits…"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1ZvsHddwZg


+12: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.

Bias Bounty Mapping Equity Challenge
By GSMA and Zindi.
"Are the communities most vulnerable to climate risk properly represented in open map data? Open map data underpins emergency dispatch, evacuation routing, and disaster relief. But coverage is often uneven. Our hypothesis is that the communities most exposed to climate risk are also among the least well-mapped. Where those gaps overlap with wildfire corridors, extreme-heat cities, and drought-prone tribal lands, the consequences can be life-threatening…"
https://zindi.world/competitions/bias-bounty-mapping-equity-challenge

[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.


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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