[webdev] Web Design Update: April 17, 2014

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Thu Apr 17 06:13:08 CDT 2014 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 43, April 17, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 43 CONTENTS.

SECTION ONE: New references.
What's new at the Web Design Reference site?
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/
New links in these categories:

01: ACCESSIBILITY.
02: DRUPAL.
03: EVALUATION & TESTING.
04: JAVASCRIPT.
05: TOOLS.
06: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Short Note on alt in HTML
By Steve Faulkner.	
"It is no longer a WCAG 2.0 conformance failure to have an <img>
without an alt attribute, as long as the img element has an accessible
name provided using another method such as aria-label. It is still a
conformance error in HTML  to have an <img> without an alt attribute
(unless the img has a caption provided using the figure and figcaption
elements)..."
http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/04/short-note-alt/

Clearing Up Summary
By Dennis Lembree.
"The summary attribute is a 'classic' method to describe data tables
to screen readers users. It's mentioned in Section 508 and even in
WCAG 2.0 technique H73. But this technique is outdated and I haven't
recommended its use for a while now..."
http://www.webaxe.org/clearing-up-summary/

Control the Visual Presentation of Text Using CSS
By Denis Boudreau.
"Make sure the presentation of text is handled through CSS, not HTML..."
http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/82592559857/control-the-visual-presentation-of-text-using-css

Provide a Text Alternative Describing the Purpose of the CAPTCHA
By Denis Boudreau.
"Make sure CAPTCHAs have text alternatives that describe their purpose..."
http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/82753858464/provide-a-text-alternative-describing-the-purpose-of

Provide Alternate Audio CAPTCHAs to Support Visual CAPTCHA Tasks
By Denis Boudreau.
"Make sure alternate audio CAPTCHAs are also provided and serve the
same purpose..."
http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/82890796420/provide-alternate-audio-captchas-to-support-visual

Accessibility Considerations for Online Courses
By Janet Sylvia.
"The growth and popularity of online courses is at an all-time high.
In the five years to 2012, the online education market in Australia
grew by almost 20% and was valued at US$4.68 billion..."
http://www.accessiq.org/news/news/2014/04/accessibility-considerations-for-online-courses

CVAA for Fostering Innovation and Change
By Sarah Horton.
"CVAA is short for the 21st Century Communications and Video
Accessibility Act. It's a U.S. law that was signed into effect by
President Obama in October 2010, for the purpose of ensuring that
accessibility requirements keep pace with advances in communication
technologies. Title I: Communications Access covers communication
services and equipment and Title II: Video Programming covers media
accessibility. Both require communication and video manufacturers and
service providers to address the needs of people with disabilities in
their products and services..."
http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/04/cvaa-fostering-innovation-change/

Global Considerations in Creating an Organizational Web Accessibility Policy
By David Sloan.
"TPG's Accessible User Experience team recently did some work for a
client exploring legislation and standards on digital accessibility in
selected countries around the world, and their impact on defining an
organizational accessibility policy for globally-active
organizations..."
http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/04/global-considerations-creating-organizational-web-accessibility-policy/

Empathy
By Wendy Chisholm.
"I had a great lunch with Dylan on Friday and he tweeted afterward:
'UX and accessibility both have empathy as a core value. So why don't
UX and #a11y work together more?'..."
http://sp1ral.com/2014/04/empathy/


+02: DRUPAL.

Contributing to Drupal, the Nomensa Way
By Michel Vloon.
"Here at Nomensa we have accessibility at the heart, so when we get
granted time in our schedule to work on contributing modules to the
Drupal community, our first choice was to look into contributing
modules that could raise the standard of accessibility across
Drupal..."
http://www.nomensa.com/blog/2014/contributing-to-drupal-the-nomensa-way/

PA11Y Integration
By Michel Vloon.
"The PA11Y Integration module acts as a client for a PA11Y webservice.
A pa11y-webservice provides scheduled accessibility reports for
multiple URLs. It runs pa11y on a list of URLs, which you can update
and query the results of via a JSON web-service."
https://drupal.org/project/pa11y_integration

A Local Programmer's Life-Changing Software for Internet Accessibility
By Sara Rubin.
"...Now Acquia, along with the Quality Institute Dutch Municipalities
(the agency that manages websites for the government of the
Netherlands), have taken the lead on getting Quail perfected. Quail
will be integrated into Drupal version 7, meaning all websites built
with Drupal - which include powerhouses like whitehouse.gov and
energy.gov - will have Quail built in for accessibility when they
upgrade from the current version..."
http://www.montereycountyweekly.com/archives/2014/0403/a-local-programmer-s-life-changing-software-for-internet-accessibility/article_edcc05b0-ba9f-11e3-975f-001a4bcf6878.html


+03: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Identifying the 3 Types of Missing Data
By Jeff Sauro.
"How concerned should you be with missing responses in your survey?..."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/missing-data.php


+04: EVENTS.

Importance of Color Accessibility
Webinar
April 24, 2014.
http://easi.cc/clinic.htm#april


+05: JAVASCRIPT.

The Maximum Call Stack Size
By Axel Rauschmayer.
"Are you curious what the maximum call stack size of your JavaScript
engine is? The following function lets you find out..."
http://www.2ality.com/2014/04/call-stack-size.html

JavaScript Touch/Pointer Events Research Notes - Screenreaders, Faked
Mouse Events, Touchscreens
By Patrick H. Lauke.
"Over the last two years I've been dabbling with various aspects
related to the handling of touch events and pointer events -
specifically trying to determine which events are being dispatched by
browsers as a result of touchscreen interactions, and what the
repercussions of this are considering the increasing number of
multi-input devices (such as laptops that feature both traditional
keyboard/mouse/trackpad as well as a touchscreen, or nominally
touch-only devices such as smartphones and tablets, but paired with a
bluetooth mouse/keyboard)..."
http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/04/javascript-touchpointer-events-research-notes-screenreaders-faked-mouse-events-touchscreens/

ARIA-Controls
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"ARIA-controls property provide a relation between a parent element
and the child element..."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/04/aria-controls/


+06 TOOLS.

WCAG Contrast Checker (FireFox Extension)
By Jorge Rumoroso.
"Checks for compliance with the contrast levels, brightness and shine
in the color combination of foreground and background of textual
content based on the requirements of WCAG 1 and WCAG 2..."
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/wcag-contrast-checker/

HeadingsMap (FireFox Extension)
By Jorge Rumoroso.
"The extension generates a documentmap or index of any web document
structured with headings and/or with sections in HTML 5. It shows the
headings structure, the errors in the structure (ie. incorrect
levels), and it works as HTML5 Outliner tool.."
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/headingsmap/


+07: USABILITY.

Kill Your Conversion Killing Carousel Now
By W Craig Tomlin.
"...Kill your conversion killing carousels now, before more damage is
done to your website ROI and revenue. The good news is among over 50
websites I sampled, slightly less than a quarter are still using
carousels, with the vast majority either removing them entirely, or
using a modified version where the carousel is below the main home
page image and message."
http://www.usefulusability.com/kill-conversion-killing-carousels-now/

Scaling User Interfaces - An Information-Processing Approach to
Multi-Device Design
By Raluca Budiu.
"Designing for all screen sizes must consider the capacity of the
human-device communication channel, which depends on users' memory,
device portability, and screen size..."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/scaling-user-interfaces/

[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+08: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site?

Accessibility Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/accessibility.html

Association Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/associations.html

Book Listings.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/books.html

Cascading Style Sheets Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/css.html

Color Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/color.html

Dreamweaver Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/dreamweaver.html

Evaluation & Testing Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/testing.html

Event Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/events.html

Flash Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/flash.html

Information Architecture Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/architecture.html

JavaScript Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/javascript.html

Miscellaneous Web Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/misc.html

Navigation Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/navigation.html

PHP Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/php.html

Sites & Blogs Listing.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html

Standards, Guidelines & Pattern Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/standards.html

Tool Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/tools.html

Typography Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/type.html

Usability Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/usability.html

XML Information.
http://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:lcarlson at d.umn.edu


[Issue ends.]

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