. Date: Thu, 22 May 2014 06:20:06 -0500 From: Laura Carlson <lcarlson@xxxxxxxxx> To: webdev <webdev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Subject: [webdev] Web Design Update: May 22, 2014 . +++ WEB DESIGN UPDATE. - Volume 12, Issue 48, May 22, 2014. An email newsletter to distribute news and information about web design and development. ++ISSUE 48 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: HTML5. 05: USABILITY. SECTION TWO: 06: What Can You Find at the Web Design Reference Site? [Contents ends.] ++ SECTION ONE: New references. +01: ACCESSIBILITY. Web Accessibility Toolkit By Molly Schwartz. "Research libraries have an important opportunity to meet the urgent need to make information resources accessible to all of their patrons, regardless of ability or disability. In so doing, libraries can fulfill their mission to be content leaders in higher education and enhance information access to their users. The path forward requires planning and collaboration across the research institution, particularly with academic leadership, disability services offices, and information technology units. This toolkit is here to help. Accessibility is not only an ethical imperative; it is a legal requirement." http://accessibility.arl.org/ Transcripts and Captions - Do-It-Yourself or Outsource? By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "This is part 2 in an ongoing series on transcripts and captions for videos and podcasts. Check out the first post in the series, Benefits of Transcripts and Captions for Your Videos and Podcasts. Other posts for the series are listed at the end of this post..." http://www.lireo.com/transcripts-captions-do-it-yourself-or-outsource/ CU-Boulder Student Seeks Accessibility Through Federal Complaint By Sarah Kuta. "Esha Mehta working toward improving campus for students with visual impairments..." http://www.coloradodaily.com/cu-news/ci_25764266/ cu-boulder-student-seeks-a%0Accessibility-through-federal-complaint Create Bookmarks from the Content Structure in PDF Documents By Denis Boudreau. "Make sure PDF documents can be navigated using bookmarks..." http://dboudreau.tumblr.com/post/86376311462/create-bookmarks-from-the-content-structure-in-pdfMobile And Accessibility - Why You Should Care And What You Can Do About It
By TJ VanToll. "1. Make Sure Everything Works With The Keyboard; 2. Mark Up Forms Semantically; 3. Provide Plenty Of Contrast; 4. Ensure That Screen Readers Know What Your Controls Do; 5. Test Your Website On An Actual Screen Reader..." http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/05/21/ mobile-accessibility-why-care-what-can-you-do/ Easy Chirp Now Provides Accessible Images for Your Tweets By Dennis Lembree. "You can now provide accessible images for your Tweets using the web-accessible Twitter client Easy Chirp (@EasyChirp) which allows a title (a short description) and a long description to be entered along with the image. The title is required." http://www.webaxe.org/ easy-chirp-now-provides-accessible-images-for-your-tweets/ Accessibility TV Network Crowd Funding Campaign Launched By a11y.tv. "The Accessibility Training Network (a11y.tv) is designed to teach you how to reach this important market segment. Meant to be an affordable subscription based training network, a11y.tv will create and present courses on topics related to serving the needs of people with disabilities as we build our new world..." http://a11y.tv/ +02: DRUPAL. The Drupal Accessibility Advantage By Mike Gifford. Mike's presentation from http://inclusivedesign24.org/ for Global Accessibility Awareness Day. http://www.slideshare.net/openconcept/inclusive-design-24-gaad-34727054 User Facing Accessibility Improvements in Core (Part 1 of D8 A11y Update) By Mike Gifford. "Drupal 7 still remains the most accessible open source CMS available. The changes that the community began implementing in 2008 to improve accessibility for the entire user interface (public, content editor, administrator and developer) has still not been matched by any other piece of web software (open source or proprietary). By focusing accessibility efforts on improving Core, we are able to fix accessibility problems by default regardless of what themes, or extensions are used in any given implementation. That being said, Drupal 8 is already considerably better, and not just because we removed Overlay." https://groups.drupal.org/node/420413 Accessibility Issues That Affect Administrators (Part 2 of D8 A11y Update) By Mike Gifford. "In Part 1, I mentioned Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) although most of the analysis here will be geared to achieving Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 AA. Drupal is both about web content and the process of authoring that content and ATAG 2.0 is about both. For the most part we've looked at seeing that the admin side of Drupal is as accessible as the public facing components. The interface also has a strong role in producing better, more accessible content. Being able to force alt text for images is a part of this, but it is just the beginning..." https://groups.drupal.org/node/422598 +03: EVALUATION & TESTING. Top 10 Mistakes People Make When Conducting User Testing By Deborah Edwards-Onoro. "At yesterday's Clean Up Your Bad User Testing Habits webinar, Dr. Susan Weinschenk highlighted the mistakes people make when planning, conducting, and analyzing user testing and shared tips on how to avoid those bad habits..." http://www.lireo.com/ top-10-mistakes-people-make-when-conducting-user-testing/ +04: HTML5. A <picture> Perfect Problem By Matt Wilcox. "Any client-side solution to the responsive images problem must bake into its mark-up the breakpoints that are in use in the current design. Change the design and those breakpoints are likely to be wrong. So you'll need to change all of the client-side mark-up that references images. This is not something that can be worked around. Picture is as good as it's going to get on the client side, and using it will mean making that sacrifice..." https://mattwilcox.net/archives/a-picture-perfect-problem/ Responsive Images Done Right - A Guide To <picture> And srcset By Eric Portis. "The latest specification of the <picture> element is the result of years (years!) of debate on how to make images adapt. It gives authors semantic ways to group multiple versions of the same image, each version having technical characteristics that make it more or less suitable for a particular user. The new specification has achieved broad consensus and is being implemented in Chrome, Opera and Firefox (maybe even Internet Explorer!) as I type. The time to start learning this stuff is now!" http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/05/14/ responsive-images-done-right-guide-picture-srcset/ +05: USABILITY. Marketing Strength in Website Design - Don't Try to 'Blow the Doors Off' By Bob Johnson. "These designs may win creativity awards for being 'cool' and 'blowing the doors off' conventional university websites. In the marketing world, they fail against the clean and simple top task approach introduced last year at University of Ottawa. Based on research to learn the top tasks of site visitors, Ottawa gives page prominence to just 4 links placed in the center of the page." http://www.bobjohnsonblog.com/2014/04/ website-marketing-strength-top-tasks-vs-design-creativity.html What's Wrong with the Redesigned Bucknell University Website? By Karine Joly. "I don't know about you, but when 2 consultants working in higher education, Bob Johnson and Gerry McGovern, take the time to publish 3 different posts on what's wrong with the redesigned website of an institution AND Mark Greenfield tweets about it, it gets my attention." http://collegewebeditor.com/blog/index.php/archives/2014/05/15/ whats-wrong-with-the-redesigned-bucknell-university-website/ The Definitive Guide to Form Label Positioning By Jessica Enders. "When it comes to the design and development of forms, one of the most popular topics is the positioning of labels..." http://www.sitepoint.com/definitive-guide-form-label-positioning/ Accordions Are not Always the Answer for Complex Content on Desktops By Hoa Loranger. "Longer pages can benefit users. Accordions shorten pages and reduce scrolling, but they increase the interaction cost by requiring people to decide on topic headings." http://www.nngroup.com/articles/accordions-complex-content/ Customer-Centric and Easy-to-Use is the New Business Model By Gerry McGovern. "Truly customer-centric companies will dominate the Internet Age." http://gerrymcgovern.com/new-thinking/ customer-centric-and-easy-use-new-business-model-alibaba-story 7 Reasons Usability Problems Don't Get Fixed By Jeff Sauro. "Finding and fixing usability problems is one of the most effective ways for improving the user experience on websites, applications and hardware. But just because a problem is identified in a usability test doesn't mean it gets fixed. While this may seem perplexing, there are usually good reasons. Here are seven reasons why usability problems often don't get fixed." http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/problems-fixed.php Good Design Ain't Pretty By Luke Jones. "Good design is not about making something pretty. It is about making something usable and intuitive - the beauty of the product will be a result of these things." http://lukejones.me/archives/good-design-aint-pretty [Section one ends.] ++ SECTION TWO: +06: 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 and 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 and Blogs Listing. http://www.d.umn.edu/itss/training/online/webdesign/sites.html Standards, Guidelines and 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. WEB DESIGN UPDATE is available by subscription. For information on how to subscribe and unsubscribe please visit: http://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@xxxxxxxxx [Issue ends.] . .