Web Design Update: March 27, 2024

[Laura Carlson]

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 22, Issue 40, March 27, 2024.

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

++ISSUE 40 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: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: EVENTS.
05: HTML.
06: JAVASCRIPT.
07: MISCELLANEOUS.
08: NAVIGATION.
09: TYPOGRAPHY.
10: USABILITY.
11: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

2024 CSUN Keynote Address
By Haben Girma.
"…the difference between accommodations for sighted people and accommodations for blind people its ableism. There are lights in this room. There are slides on the screen. Those are accommodations for sighted people. They cost money. Lights and slides cost money but we invest in that because accommodations for sighted people is normalized…"
https://www.youtube.com/live/WW7erYVOej4?feature=shared&t=2044

How to Test 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum)
By James Edwards.
"Success Criterion 3.3.8 Accessible Authentication (Minimum) is concerned with cognitive function tests that are used to authenticate users…"
https://www.tpgi.com/how-to-test-3-3-8-accessible-authentication-minimum/

WCAG? More like, W-what?!
By Steve Frenzel.
"…In this article, I want to share three resources that simplify the content (of WCAG)…"
https://stevefrenzel.dev/posts/wcag-more-like-what/

CSUNATC: WCAGmire
By Adrian Roselli.
"Download a 4.4MB tagged PDF of my slides or try the embedded view if your browser displays PDF inline…"
https://adrianroselli.com/2024/03/csunatc-wcagmire.html

Plain Language and Accessibility
By Minnesota IT Services Communications.
"How writing in plain language makes digital content more accessible…"
https://mn.gov/mnit/media/blog/?id=38-614411

Accommodating Neurodivergent Learners with Star Peterson (Video)
By A11yTalks.
"Star Peterson, M.Ed. (they/them) is a multiply neurodivergent instructional designer, eLearning developer, and diversity trainer. Star discusses how to design learning content that is accessible to autistic learners as well as learners with ADHD, learning disabilities, Traumatic Brain Injury, and other neurodivergences…"
https://a11ytalks.com/posts/2024-MAR/

SteveSounds - An Accessible Steve Sounds Soundboard
By Steve Faulkner.
"'Using real buttons is all well and good but it can only get you so far. For most sites, this will represent just a small percentage of the UI, of interactive elements unless, of course, your website is pretty much ONLY a collection of buttons, like a soundboard.' And so I built this to prove the point…"
https://a11y-tools.com/steve/

CAPTCHA Excludes Disabled Web Users
By Jeffrey Zeldman.
"The W3C explains how CAPTCHA excludes disabled users, and suggests alternatives that may be kinder and more reliable…"
https://zeldman.com/2024/03/22/captcha-excludes-disabled-web-users/

"It's Kind of Context Dependent": Understanding Blind and Low Vision People's Video Accessibility Preferences Across Viewing Scenarios (PDF)
By Jiang, Jung, Phutane, Stangl, and Azenkot.
"While audio description (AD) is the standard approach for making videos accessible to blind and low vision (BLV) people, existing AD guidelines do not consider BLV users' varied preferences across viewing scenarios…"
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.10792.pdf

Web Accessibility Survey
By Charlie Beach, Nick Goodrum, David Hamlin, Nuno Nebeker, Samuel Proulx, Norbert Rum, et al.
"…Key Findings: Screen reader users can also be mouse users… Keyboard navigation on mobile is difficult… Different user types are noting negative experiences with overlays…"
https://webaccessibilitysurvey.com/survey-results/

Accessibility Lawsuit Against Sweetgreen
By Thomas Logan.
"…Ali Colak has filed a lawsuit against Sweetgreen, Inc. stating the company's website is not accessible and violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA)…"
https://equalentry.com/accessibility-lawsuit-against-sweetgreen/


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Using Relative Colors
By Chris Mills.
"The CSS colors module defines relative color syntax, which allows a CSS <color> value to be defined relative to another color. This is a powerful feature that enables easy creation of complements to existing colors - such as lighter, darker, saturated, semi-transparent, or inverted variants - enabling more effective color palette creation…"
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/CSS_colors/Relative_colors

Progressive Disclosure Defaults
By Jeremey Keith.
"…Make sure that the default state is safe. Then enhance."
https://adactio.com/journal/20999


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Personas 101 (Videos)
By Kim Salazar.
"Personas are personified representations of real information about our target audience that enable us to design with real customers in mind. They help us align ideas and apply what we know."
https://www.nngroup.com/videos/personas-101/

Is the SUS Too Antiquated?
By Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis.
"The System Usability Scale (SUS) is one of the oldest standardized UX questionnaires…"
https://measuringu.com/is-the-sus-too-antiquated/


+04: EVENTS.

A Taste of ReelAbilities New York 2024
April 2, 2024.
Online and New York, New York, U.S.A
https://www.meetup.com/a11ynyc/events/299771401/

Navigating Accessibility in Tech: Insights from Salesforce and Adobe with Derek Featherstone and Elle Waters
April 18, 2024 at 10 a.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time.
Online
https://intopia.digital/articles/intopia-webinar-navigating-accessibility-in-tech-insights-from-salesforce-and-adobe/

Accessibility Camp Bay Area
May 5, 2024.
San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
https://www.accessibilitycampbay.org/

Accessibile ICT Procurement - Ask the Professionals
May 7, 2024.
Online
https://events.humanitix.com/ozewai-online-event-ask-the-professionals-7-may-2024

San Diego Accessibility and Inclusive Design May Meetup
May 9, 2024.
Online and San Diego, California, U.S.A
https://www.meetup.com/a11ysd/events/299621848/

Web Accessibility Webinar for Programmers and Developers with Dennis E. Lembrée
May 29, 2024.
Online
https://eastersealstech.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ERRzj63XSCecspDFXu9Ajw#/registration

The UX Conf
September 13, 2024.
Online and London, England, United Kingdom
https://theuxconf.com/


+05: HTML.

On popover Accessibility: What the Browser Does and Doesn't Do
By Hidde de Vries and Scott O'Hara.
"One of the premises of the new popover attribute is that it comes with general accessibility considerations 'built in'. What does 'built in accessibility' actually mean for browsers that support popover?…"
https://www.scottohara.me/blog/2024/03/22/popover-a11y.html

Popover A11y
By Scott O'Hara.
"I wrote this article on the default accessibilty properties (some might say 'semantics') of the popover attribute with Hidde de Vries. We both have been involved in Open UI, and were involved in the creation of the popover attribute and API…"
https://www.scottohara.me/2024/03/22/popover-a11y.html


+06: JAVASCRIPT.

ARIA role="application" and Mobile Screen Readers
By Bogdan Cerovac.
"There are some limited resources on ARIA role application, but I missed more information for mobile screen readers and just quickly checked the situation on Android and iPhone. It seems that support is not there, besides some small quirks. Be even more careful with role=application…"
https://cerovac.com/a11y/2024/03/aria-roleapplication-and-mobile-screen-readers/


+07: MISCELLANEOUS.

Many Disability Professionals Don't Understand Ableism
By Carli Friedman.
"…While 72% of disability professionals said they knew what ableism was, only 48% of disability professionals actually did. So not only did less than half of disability professionals understand ableism, many had a false confidence when it comes to their knowledge about ableism…"
https://www.c-q-l.org/resources/articles/many-disability-professionals-dont-understand-ableism/

uBlockOrigin & uBlacklist Huge AI Blocklist
By laylavish et al.
"A huge blocklist of sites that contain AI generated content for uBlock Origin & uBlacklist…"
https://github.com/laylavish/uBlockOrigin-HUGE-AI-Blocklist/tree/main

Go Ahead and Block AI Web Crawlers
By Cory Dransfeldt.
"…Blocking these crawlers also assumes that you trust these companies to obey a long-lived, standard tool like robots.txt and given their argument that everything they can access is fair game for ingestion, it's fair to question whether they'll have the basic decency to do so. My robots.txt looks like this…"
https://coryd.dev/posts/2024/go-ahead-and-block-ai-web-crawlers/


+08: NAVIGATION.

Content is Navigation
By Paul Kinchla.
"…there are also very specific ways to navigate interfaces by means of content. This is one of the fundamental ways that some assistive technology works…"
https://paulkinchla.com/blog/2024/03/24/content-is-navigation/


+09: TYPOGRAPHY.

Inclusive Sans
By Olivia King.
"Inclusive Sans is a text font designed for accessibility and readability…"
https://www.oliviaking.com/inclusive-sans


+10: USABILITY.

Error Messages 101 (Video)
By Tim Neusesser.
"When humans interact with computers, mistakes and misunderstandings are inevitable. In these situations, good error messages are a vital tool to avoid frustrations and provide a satisfying user experience."
https://www.nngroup.com/videos/error-messages-101/

The Importance of Microcopy
By Nomensa.
"…Microcopy or microcontent are the tiny pieces of writing that populate a website, app or product…"
https://www.nomensa.com/blog/content-design-microcopy/

Calculators and Quizzes: User Expectations
By Tanner Kohler.
"Calculators and quizzes provide personalized information. Users approach these tools with an exploratory mindset and appreciate them while making decisions."
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/calculator-expectations/


+11: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY.

Big Tech Hates Quality
By Gerry McGovern.
"Quality has long been the enemy of Big Tech…"
https://gerrymcgovern.com/big-tech-hates-quality/

[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.]