+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 25, Issue, April 1, 2025. 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: COLOR. 04: DRUPAL 05: EVALUATION & TESTING. 06: EVENTS. 07: JAVASCRIPT. 08: MISCELLANEOUS. 10: NAVIGATION. 09: TOOLS. 10: TYPOGRAPHY. 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. Mind the WCAG Automation Gap By Steve Faulkner. "What can automated tools test without humans?…" https://html5accessibility.com/stuff/2025/03/27/mind-the-wcag-automation-gap/ WCAG 3: The True Story! (Slides) By Chuck Adams, Rachael Bradley Montgomery, Alastair Campbell, and Kevin White. Chuck, Rachael, and Alastair's Powerpoint slides from the 2025 CSUN conference are available for download. https://www.w3.org/2025/Talks/CSUN/2025-CSUN-wcag3-update.pptx CSUN 2025 Conference Notes Alastair Campbell. "The CSUN ATC conference is one of the largest accessibility related conferences in the world. (It stands for 'California State University in Northridge', the conference name is actually 'Assistive Technology Conference'.)…" https://alastairc.uk/2025/03/csun-2025-conference-notes/ Benchmarking Usability and the Cognitive Accessibility Frontier By Equal Entry. "This article is based on Abid Virani and Alwar Pillai's talk at A11yNYC…" https://equalentry.com/cognitive-accessibility-usability/ Designers, Your Excuse Is Gone. Stunning, Animated and Accessible. Yes, You Can! By Anne-Mieke Bovelett. "The new GitHub signup experience is proof: Accessibility and stunning animated design can go hand in hand…" https://annebovelett.eu/designers-your-excuse-is-gone-stunning-animated-and-accessible-yes-you-can/ Don't Use Scores From Automatic Tools in Your Accessibility Statement - Do This Instead By Bogdan Cerovac. "Accessibility statements are not there for authorities, but for your users. And 90/100 and similar scores mean different things to different people, so I suggest to drop them and rather make the statement understandable…" https://cerovac.com/a11y/2025/03/dont-use-scores-from-automatic-tools-in-your-accessibility-statement-do-this-instead/ EN301549 Requirements That Go Beyond WCAG (Video) By IAAP Nordic Chapter. "Public sector bodies in scope of the Web Accessibility Directive must meet the minimum accessibility requirements of EN301549 Annex A. 60+ of these requirements go beyond WCAG, and are deemed difficult to interpret, as there is no 'how to meet', or 'understanding' documentation…" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgXFHKD8FuI West Virginia University Sued Over Inaccessible Educational Technology By Eve Hill. "…Two blind students, the National Federation of the Blind, and its West Virginia affiliate filed a lawsuit against West Virginia University last week for using inaccessible technology and materials, failing to offer readers, and placing blind students in inaccessible field placements…" https://www.lflegal.com/2025/03/west-virginia-university-lawsuit/ Accessibility is a Civil Right: Lainey Feingold's 2025 CSUN Digital Accessibility Legal Update By Lainey Feingold. "Short article with slide deck and recording…" https://www.lflegal.com/2025/03/2025-csun-legal-update/ Legal Update: March 2025 By Ken Nakata. "The Second Circuit's Calcano opinion now appears to be the most popular way that courts in the Second Circuit dispose of web accessibility complaints…" https://convergeaccessibility.com/2025/03/31/legal-update-march-2025/ +02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS. a:focus-visible By Jeremy Keith. "{outline-offset: 0.25em; outline-width: 0.25em; outline-color: currentColor;} …makes any website better." https://adactio.com/notes/21812 How Do We Move Logical Shorthands Forward? By Miriam Suzanne. "We're trying to make progress on shorthand syntax for CSS logical properties. But the path forward depends on where we hope to be a decade from now…" https://www.oddbird.net/2025/03/27/logical-options/ The Systemic Failure of Implementing CSS Principles By Andrea Davanzo. "Before CSS came along, HTML did not have a version specifically dedicated to styling…" https://www.adavanzo.com/articles/2025/the-systemic-failure-of-implementing-css-principles The Case for "Old School" CSS By Hui Jing. "Do people still write CSS in CSS files any more…" https://chenhuijing.com/blog/the-case-for-old-school-css +03: COLOR. A11y 101: 1.4.3 Contrast (Minimum) By Nat Tarnoff. "One of the most common issues I see when testing is the content not having enough contrast. With 1.4.3, we're focus on the contrast of text. This can be text in an image or just on the page. Later we'll talk about the contrast of active controls in 1.4.11…" https://tarnoff.info/2025/03/25/a11y-101-1-4-3-contrast-minimum/ +04: DRUPAL State of Drupal Presentation (March 2025) By Dries Buytaer. "…In my DrupalCon Atlanta keynote last week, I reflected on the journey so far, but mostly talked about the work ahead. If you missed the keynote, you can watch the video below, or download my slides…" https://dri.es/state-of-drupal-presentation-march-2025 +05: EVALUATION & TESTING. How to Conduct an Accessibility Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide By Michael Beck. "In this guide, we'll walk you through the key steps to conducting an accessibility audit, whether you're an experienced developer, a product manager, or a business owner looking to improve compliance and usability…" https://afixt.com/how-to-conduct-an-accessibility-audit-a-step-by-step-guide/ Cognitive Accessibility Is the Future of UX Design and Research By Alwar Pillai. "For too long, cognitive accessibility has been an afterthought in digital product development…" https://makeitfable.com/article/cognitive-accessibility-is-the-future-of-ux/ A Taxonomy (Visual Overview) of 70+ UX Metrics By Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis. "Measuring the user experience starts with UX metrics…" https://measuringu.com/taxonomy-of-70-ux-metrics/ How To Argue Against AI-First Research By Vitaly Friedman. "Companies have been turning their attention to 'synthetic,' AI-driven user testing. However, as convenient as it might seem, it's dangerous, expensive, and usually diminishes user value. Let's take a closer look at why exactly it is problematic and how we can argue against it to make a case for UX research with real users. …" https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2025/03/how-to-argue-against-ai-first-research/ +06: EVENTS. Multiple Perspectives 2025 April 7-8, 2025. Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A. https://ada.osu.edu/multiple-perspectives-conference/multiple-perspectives-2025 Navigating the 2026 ADA Guidelines April 16, 2025. Online https://internet2.edu/net-panopto-webinar-navigating-the-2026-ada-guidelines/ The Digital Accessibility Legal Landscape in U.S. April 17, 2025. Tokyo, Japan https://www.meetup.com/a11ytokyo/events/ a11yTO Camp 2025 April 26, 2025. Toronto, Ontario, Canada https://camp.a11yto.com/ International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) June 29-July 2, 2025. San Antonio, Texas, U.S.A. https://conference.iste.org/2025/ National Federation of the Blind National Convention July 8-13, 2025. New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.A. https://nfb.org/get-involved/national-convention WeAreDevelopers World Congress July 9-11, 2025. Berlin, Germany https://www.wearedevelopers.com/world-congress +07: JAVASCRIPT. Could JavaScript Have Synchronous await? By Axel Rauschmayer. In JavaScript, code has color: It is either synchronous or asynchronous. In this blog post, we explore: * The problems caused by that * How to fix them via synchronous await * The two downsides that prevent synchronous await from being practical…" https://2ality.com/2025/03/sync-await.html Why the Latest JavaScript Frameworks Are a Waste of Time By Leon Martin. "If you've been in web development for more than five minutes, you know the drill. Every few months, a new JavaScript framework pops up, promising to fix everything wrong with the previous generation…" https://dev.to/holasoymalva/why-the-latest-javascript-frameworks-are-a-waste-of-time-52pc +08: MISCELLANEOUS. Resisting at the Table: AI, Disability, and Access By Frank Elavsky. "Nobody who is a good person who also dislikes AI wants to hear this: Refusal and resistance are necessary, but if we don't have power, we will probably lose. We need to resist and refuse while we still have a place at the table. And if we don't have a place at the table, we need to invite ourselves to it…" https://www.frank.computer/blog/2025/03/get-involved.html Poisoning Well By Heydon Pickering. "…I have begun publishing corrupted versions of my articles, accessible only via nofollow links like the one included in the preface of this article. It won't stop the crawlers from reading the canonical article…Theoretically, this approach will dupe bad actor crawlers and poison the LLMs they work for, but without destroying my search ranking…" https://heydonworks.com/article/poisoning-well/ Change, Not Charity: The Americans with Disabilities Act (Video) By Public Broadcasting System. "Change, Not Charity: The Americans with Disabilities Act tells the emotional and dramatic story of the decades-long push for equality and accessibility that culminated in the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990…" https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/change-not-charity-americans-disabilities-act/ Markup Languages By Jens Oliver Meiert. "You know the big MLs (markup languages): the mother of all markup languages, SGML, its famous offspring, HTML, the visionary cousin, XML, and the strict chatty grandchild, XHTML. That is, these…did you also know the following 'small' markup languages, that is, those calling themselves or being called 'markup language,' those that have had some or almost some impact on the Web?…" https://meiert.com/en/blog/markup-languages/ +09: TOOLS. My Favorite Tools for Web Accessibility Testing By Alexander Lehner. "Web accessibility has many facets: Operation with the keyboard and other input devices, alternative texts for images, descriptive headings and error texts, etc. The range of tools for testing the accessibility of websites is just as diverse…" https://www.oidaisdes.org/accessibility-testing-tools.en/ Text Spacing Bookmarklet By Steve Faulkner. "Quick and dirty testing of WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 1.4.12 Text Spacing. Updated 21st March 2025, now utilizes :not pseudo-class to increase specificity" https://codepen.io/stevef/pen/YLMqbo?editors=1000 +10: TYPOGRAPHY. Revisiting Fluid Type By Miriam Suzanne, Stacy Kvernmo, and Richard Rutter. "Miriam's been asking questions about fluid typography, and how a website design should plan for (and respond to) user preferences. And we're not the only ones thinking about it! This month we continue the conversation with Richard Rutter…" https://www.oddbird.net/2025/03/20/winging-it-17/ +11: USABILITY. Consistency in UI/UX Design: The Key to User Satisfaction By Rodolpho Henrique. "Consistency in UI/UX design isn't just about aesthetics - it's the key to user trust, efficiency, and engagement. When design elements align, users feel in control. But when they don't? Confusion, frustration, and drop-offs follow. Discover why leading brands prioritize consistency and how AI and design systems can help maintain it at scale…" https://uxmag.com/articles/consistency-in-ui-ux-design-the-key-to-user-satisfaction Direct Access vs. Sequential Access: Why Direct Is Better (Video) By Tanner Kohler. "Sequential access frustrates users. Consider these examples to help you find ways to give them more direct access wherever possible." https://www.nngroup.com/videos/direct-access-vs-sequential-access/ User Journey vs. User Flow: Differences and Their Importance for UX By Syed Balkhi. "…The two terms may seem similar. But, they differ and represent a different purpose when it comes to achieving the set goals…" https://www.loop11.com/user-journey-vs-user-flow-differences-and-their-importance-for-ux/ +12: WEBWASTE & SUSTAINABILITY. CSS: Classes Seriously Sprawling By Andrea Davanzo. "…PIERA (Page Inspector using Element Regex Analysis)analyses raw HTML by employing regular expressions to identify key patterns and data points relevant to its analysis goals. While acknowledging the limitations of regex for complex HTML parsing, this approach offers a relatively fast, dependency-free, and eco-friendly way to inspect crucial page characteristics…" https://www.adavanzo.com/articles/2025/css-class-seriously-sprawling Backstage: Green Software Patterns (Podcast) By Environment Variables. "In this episode, Chris Skipper takes us backstage into the Green Software Patterns Project, an open-source initiative designed to help software practitioners reduce emissions by applying vendor-neutral best practices. Guests Franziska Warncke and Liya Mathew, project leads for the initiative, discuss how organizations like AVEVA and MasterCard have successfully integrated these patterns to enhance software sustainability. They also explore the rigorous review process for new patterns, upcoming advancements such as persona-based approaches, and how developers and researchers can contribute…" https://podcasts.castplus.fm/e/p8lxvqw8-backstage-green-software-patterns [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:lcarlson@d.umn.edu [Issue ends.]