+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 23, Issue 19, November 6, 2024. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 19 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: TYPOGRAPHY. 09: USABILITY. 10: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. SECTION TWO: 11: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. 25 Accessibility Tips to Celebrate 25 Years By Jared Smith. "As WebAIM celebrates our 25 year anniversary this month, weve shared 25 accessibility tips on our LinkedIn and Twitter/X social media channels. All 25 quick tips are compiled below." https://webaim.org/blog/25-tips/ Practical Accessibility Tips You Can Apply Today By Kevin Andrews. "…In this article, I'll share practical advice on marking up three common UI patterns the right way…" https://piccalil.li/blog/practical-accessibility-tips-you-can-apply-today/ Responsive Design and Reflow By WebAIM. "…An important component of responsive design is reflow, which is how a web page adapts to fit viewports of different sizes…" https://webaim.org/techniques/reflow/ Disabled and Obscured By Steve Faulkner. "The WCAG success criterion 1.4.3: Contrast (Minimum) requires that: 'The visual presentation of text and images of text has a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1'…" https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2024/11/04/disabled-and-obscured/ Accessible Names By New Zealand Government. "An accessible name identifies a user interface (UI) element to assistive technologies and their users - this is especially important for interactive components." https://govtnz.github.io/web-a11y-guidance/ka/fundamental-concepts-in-web-a11y/accessible-names-and-descriptions/accessible-names.html Testing With a Screen Reader Is an Important Step By Michael Harshbarger. "When ensuring your website or mobile application is accessible, testing with specific screen reader and browser combinations is a crucial step…" https://accessibilityfirstsolutions.com/testing-with-a-screen-reader-is-an-important-step/ Designing for Accessibility - Create Accessible User Experiences with AT User Flow Testing By David Sloan. "Many organizations on their journey to make digital products more accessible start with a focus on testing against standards such as the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). This helps ensure that basic accessibility requirements are met. But how do we know whether people with disabilities can use a product for its intended purpose?…" https://www.tpgi.com/designing-for-accessibility-create-accessible-user-experiences-with-at-user-flow-testing/ Why Should All Organizations Establish Feedback Mechanisms for Accessibility? By Bogdan Cerovac. "European public sector websites and mobile apps are required to have feedback mechanism. I believe that such feedback helps any kind of organization, even single person businesses…" https://cerovac.com/a11y/2024/11/why-should-all-organizations-establish-feedback-mechanisms-for-accessibility/ Accessibility and Inclusive Design Manual By Andy Jones and Jake Lloyd. "We decided to run a discovery to explore perceived challenges concerning the accessibility of [Department for Education] services. Our goal was to uncover areas where improvements could be made and identify where gaps in knowledge or practice existed. Through this research, we discovered that while teams were aware of accessibility requirements, many had limited experience with essential activities like commissioning accessibility audits, conducting internal testing, and writing accurate accessibility statements." https://accessibility.blog.gov.uk/2024/10/29/accessibility-and-inclusive-design-manual-blog/ 'Functionality' Is Not Constrained by Content By Duff Johnson. "Accessibility considerations for digital content aren't limited to navigation, reading and interaction. Users also need to be able to archive, comment, redact, extract, and more." https://pdfa.org/functionality-is-not-constrained-by-content/ Accessible Election Results Map By George Kerscher. While this is US centric, I thought many would be interested. Pleased to share this news from Pete Bossley…" https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/w3c-wai-ig/2024OctDec/0022.html An Introduction to Disability Studies (Video) By Jen DeMesquita. "The a11y community is rich in technical knowledge, but what about knowledge of larger disability issues? Understanding the disabled experience is more than knowing about the WCAG…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQoPai-soXo Towards Designing a Set of Usability and Accessibility Heuristics focused on Cognitive Diversity: An Exploratory Case Study with Generative Artificial Intelligence By Almenara Pascual and Barrantes Sayago. "This paper discusses the design and evaluation of a set of heuristics (U+A) to assess the usability and accessibility of interactive systems in terms of cognitive diversity in an integrated way…" https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202410.2444/v1 Legal Update: October 2024 By Ken Nakata. "…This month's issue is all about New York-- and specifically about the Southern District of New York. This isn't by choice-- Lexis ONLY reported cases from there this month…" https://convergeaccessibility.com/2024/11/04/legal-update-october-2024/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. CSS Masonry Layout Syntax By Michelle Barker. "…the term masonry for layout is used to describe the kind of grid layout where instead of items of various heights being aligned in neat horizontal rows, they are shifted to fill the leftover space, effectively creating a brickwork effect. It was popularised by the website Pinterest some years ago, and became a widespread UI design trend for a while…" https://css-irl.info/css-masonry-layout-syntax/ Should Masonry Be Part of CSS Grid? By Ahmad Shadeed. "An exploration of examples showing masonry as both a part of CSS Grid and as its own display type…" https://ishadeed.com/article/css-grid-masonry/ A Friendly Introduction to Container Queries By Josh W. Comeau. "For a very long time, the most-requested CSS feature has been container queries. That's been our holy grail, the biggest missing piece in the CSS toolkit. Well, container queries have finally arrived…" https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/container-queries-introduction/ State of CSS 2024 Survey Results By Sacha Greif. "Let me make a prediction: we'll look back at 2024 as the turning point between 'CSS Classic' and 'New CSS'…" https://2024.stateofcss.com/en-US/ +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. How to Conduct a Competitive Usability Evaluation (Video) By Tim Neusesser. "Competitive usability evaluations help you understand how your competitors solve certain design problems and how you might outperform them. These evaluations are often performed at the beginning of design projects to shift their direction toward areas of opportunity." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/conduct-competitive-usability-evaluation/ Research Plans: Organize, Document, Inform By Maria Rosala. "Start every UX-research study with a plan. Research plans document goals, methods, and logistics." https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pm-research-plan/ Screening Participants for User-Research Studies By Maddie Brown. "Well-written screeners ensure that your study participants are appropriate for your research goals, improve data quality, save resources, and reduce bias. " https://www.nngroup.com/articles/screening-participants/ Thinking in Metrics By Christina Wodtke. "…When choosing metrics, one question reigns supreme: Will this metric change how we act? If the answer is no, its likely a bad metric…" https://eleganthack.com/6501-2/ +04: EVENTS. The State of Accessibility - Episode 3 with Mark Miller and David Sloan November 14, 2024. Online https://www.tpgi.com/the-state-of-accessibility-episode-3/ Mid-Day Drupal Meetup December 12, 2024. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. https://www.meetup.com/twin-cities-drupal-group/events/btvnntygcqbqb/ UX Virtual Training January 11-24, 2025. Online https://www.nngroup.com/training/january/ RESCHEDULED: Nicolas Steenhout - ARIA 101 January 21, 2025. Online https://www.meetup.com/portland-accessibility-and-user-experience-meetup/events/302719204/ Axe-con February 25-27, 2025. Online https://www.deque.com/axe-con/ +05: HTML. The body Element By Heydon Pickering. "When we create or discover new things, we label them too. These labels act like IDs, making it easy to access these things in the databases that are our minds…" https://heydonworks.com/article/the-body-element/ The button Element By Heydon Pickering. "Some HTML elements, like some places, songs, and smells, have a disproportionate significance for some people. For example, among web accessibility practitioners, any mention of the