[webdev] Web Design Update: December 18, 2014

Laura Carlson lcarlson at d.umn.edu
Thu Dec 18 06:46:15 CST 2014 

+++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE.
- Volume 13, Issue 25, December 18, 2014.

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

++ISSUE 25 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: COLOR.
04: EVALUATION & TESTING.
05: EVENTS.
06: NAVIGATION.
07: TOOLS.
08: USABILITY.

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

[Contents ends.]


++ SECTION ONE: New references.

+01: ACCESSIBILITY.

Youngstown State University Settles Federal Complaint Over
Accessibility of Website for People with Disabilities
By U.S. Department of Education.
"The U.S. Department of Education announced that its Office for Civil
Rights has entered into an agreement with Youngstown State University
in Ohio to ensure that the school's websites comply with federal civil
rights laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability..."
http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-education-department-reaches-agreement-youngstown-state-university-ensure-equ

Web Accessibility Sues and Settlements in 2014
By Rakesh Paladugula.
"The U.S. Department of Education announced that its Office for Civil
Rights has entered into an agreement with Youngstown State University
in Ohio to ensure that the school's websites comply with federal civil
rights laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability..."
http://www.maxability.co.in/2014/12/web-accessibility-sues-settlements-2014/

A New Challenge for Investment Managers - ADA Compliant PDFs, Websites
By John Toepfer.
"I was in a client meeting a few weeks ago when I first heard the
phrase- compliant documents.  One of our major asset management
clients announced that they were beginning to make plans to update
their literature strategies to ensure their electronic documents are
accessible to people with disabilities, according to Section 508
standards. As their document automation vendor, we took this news very
seriously and immediately started taking a closer look at how this
would affect our business and our clients..."
http://www.snth.com/blog/new-regulation-investment-managers-ada-compliant-pdfs-websites/

Three Easy Tips for Accessible Theming
By Joe Dolson.
"Let's start with a question: what is accessibility, and why do we care?.."
https://make.wordpress.org/themes/2014/12/15/three-easy-tips-for-accessible-theming/

One Year of Accessibility-Ready
By Joe Dolson.
"...Coming out of the WordPress community summit in San Francisco was
wild goal: to require all WordPress themes hosted in the WordPress
repository to meet accessibility requirements. It's a wild and crazy
idea, and there's a lot of work ahead to get there - but we're pushing
the idea forward. We've published an initial roadmap, and met to
discuss the issues..."
https://www.joedolson.com/2014/12/one-year-accessibility-ready/

How Subtitles Add Value, Not Just Access
By I Heart Subtitles.
"..., subtitles and captioning can add value in 4 areas..."
http://iheartsubtitles.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/how-subtitles-add-value-not-just-access/

WCAG 2.0 Should Not Be Applied to Software and Mobile Apps
By Ken Nakata.
"I have growing concerns about the application of the W3C Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 to software and particularly
mobile apps. To avoid any confusion, let me clarify that when I say
'software and mobile apps' I am not talking about software with a
browser-based user interface (e.g. Microsoft Office 365 Web apps,
SharePoint, or Google Docs) instead, I am referring to software that
has a user interface (UI) separate from the browser..."
http://blog.hisoftware.com/2014/accessibility/wcag-2-0-should-not-be-applied-to-software-and-mobile-apps


+02: CASCADING STYLE SHEETS.

Using CSS Floats with Image Links
By Heidi Jungel.
"The use of CSS floats has been a common method for developers to
position content on a web page. According to the W3C CSS 2
specification, section 9.5, 'A float is a box that is shifted to the
left or right on the current line.' Ensuring visual keyboard focus
indication can be tricky for floated image links..."
https://www.ssbbartgroup.com/blog/2014/12/16/using-css-floats-with-image-links/

How To Use Position Relative and Position Absolute Correctly
By CSS Newbies.
"Using position in CSS is a big deal. It can be the difference between
code that works OK in certain situations, and code that works
beautifully every single time..."
http://www.cssnewbie.com/how-to-use-position-relative-and-position-absolute-correctly/

Why the :visited Pseudo-Class is Strange
By Jacob Gube.
"Modern browsers have severely restrained the CSS properties that
developers can use in a style rule that uses the :visited link
pseudo-class. If you're unfamiliar with this oddball pseudo-class, you
may be wondering why your site's visited links aren't rendering as
expected."
http://sixrevisions.com/css/visited-pseudo-class-strange/

Design Considerations - Text on Images
By Chris Coyier.
"I enjoyed Erik D. Kennedy's post 7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI
(Part 2). In it, his Rule 4 is: Learn the methods of overlaying text
on images. I thought we could take a look at all his points, code them
up, and note anything that comes up technically..."
http://css-tricks.com/design-considerations-text-images/


+03: COLOR.

The Effect Of Luminance and Contrast Ratio On Accessibility
By Steven Bradley.
"You know it's important to contrast text with it's background. Black
text on a white background offers the most contrast. Light gray text
on a light gray background, not so much. What exactly are you
contrasting and how do you know when the contrast is enough?.."
http://www.vanseodesign.com/web-design/luminance-contrast-ratio-accessibility/


+04: EVALUATION & TESTING.

Usability Evaluation of an Accessible Collaborative Writing Prototype
for Blind Users
By John Schoeberlein, Yuanqiong Wang.
"...As the answer to our research question, How a collaborative
writing interface should be designed in order to be accessible and
usable for persons who are blind?, two collaborative writing
prototypes were designed and tested using the iterative design
approach..."
http://www.uxpajournal.org/usability-evaluation-of-an-accessible-collaborative-writing-prototype-for-blind-users/

How Speeders Affect Online Research
By Jeff Sauro.
"Speeders are survey participants who finish too quickly, even
impossibly quickly. How much do they affect the quality of online
research?..."
http://www.measuringu.com/blog/speeder-research.php

The 5Ws and 1H of User Interviews
By Luke Tellefson.
"As I gained more experience doing user research, it occurred to me
that these questions are extremely useful for user (or stakeholder)
interviews. This connection may be bleedingly obvious. But I found
that by making a conscious effort to use these questions during
interviews, I felt more confident as a facilitator."
http://uxmas.com/2014/the-5ws-and-1h-of-user-interviews


+05: EVENTS.

Mobile+Web DevCon: San Francisco
February 3-5, 2015.
San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
http://mobilewebdevconference.com/

ForwardJS
February 3-5, 2015.
San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
http://forwardjs.com/

Space City JS
Houston, Texas, U.S.A.
February 5, 2015.
http://spacecityjs.com/

Interaction15
February 9-11, 2015.
San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
http://interaction15.ixda.org/

An Event Apart Atlanta
February 16-18, 2015.
Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.
http://aneventapart.com/event/atlanta-2015

Mobile World Congress
March 2-5, 2015.
Barcelona, Spain
http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/


+06: NAVIGATION.

Accessible In-Page Tabs (Video)
By Russ Weakley.
"A quick presentation done at OzeWAI 2014, on using ARIA to make
in-page tabs move accessible."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOAsU9SUooA

A Link is a Promise
By Kara Pernice.
"Any broken promise, large or small, chips away at trust and
credibility. The words in a link label make a strong suggestion about
the page that is being linked to. The destination page should fulfill
what the anchor text promises."
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/link-promise/

Format-Based Navigation is a Symptom of Organization-Centricity
By Gerry McGovern.
"Navigation based on formats, tools or systems is a sure sign that an
organization is not customer focused..."
http://gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/format-based-navigation-symptom-organization-centricity


+07: TOOLS.

Line Break Remover Tool
By textfixer.
"You can remove line breaks from blocks of text but preserve paragraph
breaks with this tool..."
http://www.textfixer.com/tools/remove-line-breaks.php

A-Tester Report
By Evaluera.
"...A-Tester evaluates the pre-enhanced version of a live http(s) web
page designed with progressive enhancement against Evaluera's 'WCAG
2.0 Level-AA conformance statements for HTML5 foundation markup' and
delivers a report that, in the absence of issues, can act as a very
broad and easily confirmed WCAG 2.0 Level-AA claim..."
http://www.evaluera.co.uk/


+08: USABILITY.

7 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Interaction Design
By Christopher Noessel.
"If I had a dime for every time I heard 'interaction design can't be
defined' I would have a frustrating amount of dimes. Such
proclamations strike me as lazy. Just because it's difficult doesn't
mean it's impossible. Let's give it a shot here..."
http://uxmas.com/2014/7-things-i-wish-everyone-knew-about-interaction-design


[Section one ends.]


++ SECTION TWO:

+09: 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

Drupal Information.
http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/drupal.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

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


+ SUBSCRIPTION INFO.

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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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