[webdev] Web Design Update: June 12, 2014

Thu Jun 12 06:08:35 CDT 2014

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 12, Issue 51, June 12, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 51 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: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.
03: DRUPAL.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: FLASH.
07: JAVASCRIPT.
08: MISCELLANEOUS.
09: NAVIGATION.

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

[Contents ends.]

++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Articulating and Advocating for Accessibility
By Matt May.
"Tech workers should be advocating for accessibility - how to get
started and what to expect."
http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/articulating-and-advocating-for-accessibility

Blocking Comment Spam Without Captchas
By Daniel Davis.
"Imagine you want to leave a comment on a blog. Next, imagine you have
to solve one of those captchas -- a jumbled image of letters and
numbers - to prove you're human. Now imagine that you can't see..."
http://daniemon.com/blog/block-comment-spam-without-captchas/

Data Tables Do Not Always Need Markup for Header Cells?
By Sailesh Panchang.
"...That statement in the HTML5 specs that suggests some data tables
do not need any header markup is ominous. I believe this will
encourage content authors / developers to take liberties while marking
up any data table and simply say they believe the table does not need
any row/column header markup or caption/summary etc and point to this
puzzle as an example."
http://www.deque.com/blog/data-tables-markup-header-cells/

Audio Description (AD)
By BarrierBreak.
"Audio description (AD) is the narration describing the body language,
expressions and movements present in the video. It gives the
information about the things that we might not be able to see or which
we may overlook. Audio Description actually describes what is
happening on the screen at that point of time. A separate audio
description track added to the original video..."
http://accessiblemedia.barrierbreak.com/audio-description-ad-video/

Justice Department Reaches Settlement with Florida State University
By Global Accessibility News.
"...Under the settlement, FSU agrees to ensure...that the FSU Police
Department website, including its employment opportunities website and
its mobile applications, conform to the Web Content Accessibility
Guidelines 2.0 Level AA Success Criteria and other Conformance
Requirements (WCAG 2.0 AA)..."
http://globalaccessibilitynews.com/2014/06/06/justice-department-reaches-settlement-with-florida-state-university/

Accessibility Regulation Confusion from U.S. Government
By Adrian Roselli.
"... Keep coding (or start coding) your sites to meet Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 Level A and AA Success Criteria. This is
the requirement the DoJ put in its ruling against H&R Block, the most
recent example we have of where the federal government is defining a
standard. And then stop worrying. As WebAIM notes, fear of litigation
isn't the best reason to make a site accessible. You should do it
because it's the right thing to do. Of course, in my HTML5 Developer
Conference talk, I argue that making accessibility all about you
(slide 13) is probably a more effective means of getting developers to
implement..."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/06/accessibility-regulation-confusion-from.html

Department of Justice Clarifies Process for Upcoming ADA Web Regulations
By Ken Nakata.
"In a series of announcements at the very end of last month, the US
Justice Department  (DOJ) divided the rulemaking for its upcoming ADA
Web accessibility regulations into two rulemaking efforts: one for
private sector and one for public sector.  It also announced that the
private sector NPRM (notice of proposed rulemaking) will be delayed
until March 2015..."
http://blog.hisoftware.com/2014/accessibility/department-of-justice-clarifies-process-for-upcoming-ada-web-regulations

Websites Hit with Demand Letters on Accessibility Issues Despite
Courts' Rejection of Claim
By David McDowell.
"In recent weeks, numerous businesses have received letters asserting
that their websites are not accessible to persons with disabilities,
in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act and California -
Unruh Act. These letters threaten litigation and warn of large penalty
claims under the Unruh Act. What these letters do not report is that
California courts have repeatedly rejected claims that the ADA and
Unruh require accessible websites, including a recent dismissal order
from Judge David Carter of the Central District of California..."
http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/websites-hit-with-demand-letters-on-acce-88625/

Structured Negotiations and Mobile Access
By The Law Office of Lainey Feingold.
"The companies listed below have worked in collaboration with the
blind community -- without any lawsuits -- to improve the accessibility
and usability of their mobile content..."
http://lflegal.com/2014/06/mobile-access/

Thoughts on Professional Accreditation in Digital Accessibility
By David Sloan.
"...I appreciate that mine is a perception looking from outside, and
my views may be very unrepresentative of accessibility professionals
in general. Regardless, I want to be part of an IAAP that prioritises
education of the many over certification of the few. We should be
draining the floodwaters, not pulling up the gangway and sailing our
boat away from those left behind."
http://58sound.com/2014/06/10/thoughts-on-professional-accreditation-in-digital-accessibility/

+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Are We Getting too Sassy?
By Ashley Nolan.
"...Are we abusing the power of Sass to perform pre-processing micro
optimisations that shouldn't be done in the first place?..."
http://ashleynolan.co.uk/blog/are-we-getting-too-sassy

+03: DRUPAL.

Drupal Self-Help Guide
By University of Minnesota.
"Discover resources of interest to you, including: courses, books,
websites, video & audio, and pdfs..."
http://it.umn.edu/services/all/training-usability/self-help/self-help-guides/drupal.html

Exposing Tables to Views in Drupal 7
By Daniel Sipos.
"In this article you are going to learn how to expose the table
created by your Drupal module to Views. Why would you like to do this?
Views is a powerful module for querying and displaying information and
can save you a lot of hassle when dealing with the custom data your
module produces..."
http://www.sitepoint.com/exposing-tables-views-drupal-7/

+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Accessibility Consulting is Broken
By Karl Groves.
"... days of the monolithic accessibility audit report are numbered,
as it is an outdated medium that fails to directly address the actual
problems faced by the consultant's clients. Clients, often driven by
pain based in ignorance, want and deserve a more direct and proactive
approach to solving the root causes of their pain. The proscriptive
nature of an audit report should give way to the close involvement and
leadership of a skilled consultant."
http://www.karlgroves.com/2014/06/09/accessibility-consulting-is-broken/

+05: EVENTS.

Madison+UX
July 10-12, 2014.
Madison, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
http://madisonpl.us/ux/

Open Web Camp
July 12, 2014.
San Jose, California, U.S.A.
http://openwebcamp.com/

Mobile Web+DevCon: Chicago 2014
July 15-17, 2014.
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A.
http://mobilewebdevconference.com/

Twin Cities Drupal Camp
August 7-10, 2014.
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.
http://2014.tcdrupal.org/

Big Design Conference
September 4-6, 2014.
Addison, Texas, U.S.A.
http://bigdesignevents.com/conference/

+06: FLASH.

Hack the Web - No Flash
By Hubert Figuiere.
"I am a hipster Flash hater. I hated Flash before Steve Jobs told it
was bad. I hate Flash before Adobe said there would be no Flash 7 for
Linux. I don't have Flash on my machine..."
http://www.figuiere.net/hub/blog/?2014/06/04/849-hack-the-web-no-flash

+07: JAVASCRIPT.

How Not To Misuse ARIA States, Properties and Roles
By Jonathan (Jon) Avila.
"...Authors must use appropriate ARIA roles, states, and properties or
unpredictable issues may occur. It is not recommended to use incorrect
properties to simply achieve support with a screen reader. Similarly,
authors should not override strong native semantics for elements and
should be very cautious about adding implied ARIA properties to
semantically equivalent HTML elements. The ARIA specification will
likely be updated and further implementation guidance provided in the
future so please share your comments and recommendations to improve
ARIA."
https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2014/06/05/how-not-to-misuse-aria-states-properties-and-roles/

Aria-labelledby and Aria-describedby Support in Popular Windows Browsers
By Steve Faulkner.
"...Firefox 29 supports aria-labelledby and aria-describedby with
single or multiple id references. Chrome 35 supports aria-labelledby
and aria-describedby with single or multiple id references. IE 11 does
not support aria-labelledby or aria-describedby with single or
multiple id references unless the referenced element is what Microsft
classes as an accessible element. IE non accessible elements can be
made into accessible elements by the addition of tabindex="-1" as
documented or via the addition of an ARIA role (when appropriate)."
http://blog.paciellogroup.com/2014/06/aria-labelledby-aria-describedby-support-popular-windows-browsers/

Using ARIA 1.0 and the WebKit Accessibility Node Inspector
By James Craig.
"On the heels of the 25th birthday of the Web, WAI-ARIA 1.0--the
specification for Accessible Rich Internet Applications--is a W3C
Recommendation, thanks in part to WebKit's implementation. Most major
web applications use ARIA and related techniques to improve
accessibility and general usability..."
https://www.webkit.org/blog/3302/aria_and_accessibility_inspector/

7 Steps to Better JavaScript
By Den Odell.
"Den Odell presents his seven-step plan for writing flawless code, and
rounds up the most useful tools for streamlining the process."
http://www.creativebloq.com/netmag/7-steps-better-javascript-51411781

Accessible Bootstrap Frameworks
By Adrian Roselli.
"If you work much with accessibility, then you might consider the
title of this post to be an oxymoron, a self-contradicting mess.
Frankly, I tend to agree. Barring a compelling use case, I never start
a project with Bootstrap and I resist including it when explicitly
requested (so far successfully in nearly every case). Of a few
reasons, accessibility is the biggest issue I have with it..."
http://blog.adrianroselli.com/2014/06/accessible-bootstrap-frameworks.html

+08: MISCELLANEOUS.

Responsive Images
By Derek Johnson.
"The <img> tag all started with this message and has been with us
since HTML 2.0. In that time it hasn't changed much at all, just put a
path to an image in the src attribute and you have an image on the
screen..."
http://nostrongbeliefs.com/responsive-images/

+09: NAVIGATION.

Avoid Format-Based Primary Navigation
By Aurora Bedford.
"Format-based navigation, such as links to Videos, at the top levels
of a website's information architecture lacks sufficient context and
information scent for topic-focused users."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/format-based-navigation/

+10: USABILITY.

The Most Fundamental Concept in Usability
By Jeff Sauro.
"There are a number of methods to improve the usability of an
interface.  While it's hard to identify one overarching concept that's
fundamental to the whole idea of usability, I think there's one that
underlies most methods and desirable outcomes.  That concept is that
the developer is not the user."
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/fundamental-usability.php

[Section one ends.]

++ SECTION TWO:

+11: 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.]