In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn why mapping is useful in discovery, find 10 quick accessibility tests anyone can do, discover how web standards was given a seat at the table, and more.
If you’re new to my blog, each Friday I publish a post highlighting my favorite user experience, accessibility, WordPress, CSS, and HTML posts I’ve read in the past week.
Hope you find the resources helpful in your work or projects!
Want more resources like these on a daily basis? Follow me @redcrew on Twitter.
Tweet of the Week
PLEASE can we stop saying “users are lazy” and start saying “Users are exhausted.”
You are a user. Which are you?
— christina r wodtke: the R is for radical focus (@cwodtke) January 20, 2022
User Experience
- In the discovery phase of a UX project, mapping provides a high-level view of the problem space and makes opportunities obvious. Maria Rosala discusses why mapping is useful in discovery as she describes three mapping methods: ecosystem, chronological, and process.
- Collaboration is crucial in design.
Dear Ux/UI Designers,
We are not competitors, therefore learn how to assist and collaborate with your fellow aspiring and accomplished designers✌🏾✌🏾✌🏾
— Design Cook♥️👩💻👩🍳 (@helen_chinweike) January 20, 2022
- Carolyn Jarrett graciously shared slides from her Surveys that work: An introduction to the Survey Octopus and Total Survey Error presentation at Harvard University’s User Research Brown Bag lunch. Jarrett spoke about creating effective surveys, why you run a survey, writing good questions, and more.
- By signing an executive order requiring federal agencies overhaul clunky systems, U.S. President Biden promised to digitize the government; getting it done won’t be easy Silos between agencies, thousands of open positions, and competing crises are three of the top obstacles.
Building cleaner user interfaces will require simplifying those definitions and convincing agencies to sacrifice some specificity and legalese for the sake of simplicity.
- Have you taken the UserZoom 2022 State of UX Survey? The quick survey only takes about 10-15 minutes to complete. Submissions are anonymous.
Accessibility
- Want to learn how difficult it is for people with disabilities to use your website? Tetra Logical shares 10 quick accessibility tests anyone can do, whether you’re a project manager, content editor, digital marketer, or anyone else at your organization.
- Joe Dolson addresses the issue of the added costs of accessibility, with a focus on WordPress sites. I’ve had this discussion with clients and colleagues for over 15 years. And personally, I’m going to start using Dolson’s final sentence in my discussions.
Accessibility is not expensive; inaccessibility is cheap.
- From their presentation at Stay Curious by Beyond Tellerand, Hidde de Vries shares slides from their A toolkit for accessibility presentation. Check out the helpful resources de Vries included with the slide presentation. Worth bookmarking!
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Today’s #accessibility tip: Remember, correct syntax is key! `<a>` takes you somewhere, `<button>` activates an event. They’re not interchangeable. Accessibility is simply best practice! 🙂
— Meg (@CodeAndWhiskey) January 19, 2022
- The release of the International Press Telecommunication Council’s October 2021 photo metadata standards introduces two new properties: Alt Text and Extended Description, both related to accessibility.
- I enjoyed reading Mike Gifford post Dr. Deming’s 14 points applied to accessibility, where Gifford explains how the 14 points of management can be used to improve digital accessibility in the services and products we create.
Look for people with experience in accessibility when hiring, and start accessibility training with the onboarding.
WordPress
- The third release candidate for WordPress 5.9 is available for download and testing.
- What makes WooCommerce the choice for a client project is the subject of this week’s Do the Woo podcast when Bob Dunn talks with Robbie Adair and Zach Stepek about their experiences using WooCommerce and other ecommerce platforms.
- I had a nice shoutout in Chris Coyier’s 4 Quality Options for a Table of Content Block in WordPress, where Chris discusses alternatives for creating a table of contents. My favorite option: Heroic Table of Contents which I reviewed last year. Thank you, Chris, for linking to my post!
- WordPress.com English-speaker users who are creating new sites can get early access now to Full Site Editing. If you’re not familiar with how Full Site Editing will work on hosted WordPress.com, check out the help in the Full Site Editing Beta support page.
CSS and HTML
- Ask a question about the number of HTML elements and you’ll likely get different answers. Along with more questions. Jens Oliver Meiert explains the difficulty of counting the number of HTML elements.
- Rather than exploring the new framework everyone is talking about, here’s one to consider:
Web development framework:
– HTML
– CSS
– JSFew know this.
— claire (@tackjhompson) January 20, 2022
- Thanks to Una Kravets for her quick five-minute video about CSS cascade layers and the @layer property. Expected in Chromium 99+ and Firefox 97+, both features on currently in Safari Tech Preview.
- I’m a big fan of Jay Hoffman’s The History of the Web, where Hoffman creates a timeline of the history of the web. This week’s post brings back lots of memories and highlights my friend Molly Holzschlag’s work over the years in giving web standards a seat at the table.
What I Found Interesting
- The acquisitions in the software industry don’t seem to stop. Microsoft has agreed to acquire Activision Blizzard, adding Call of Duty, Warcraft, Candy Crush, and more to team Xbox.
- For folks in the northern hemisphere, has the winter blues taken over your attitude? It’s time to have an attitude of gratitude.
- Shoutout to Louis Lazaris for compiling this list of 60 popular front-end tools of 2021 based on how often it was selected from his Web Tools Weekly newsletter. I can see why the CSS Layout Generator was the most popular tool. Have you used any of these tools in your projects?
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Did I miss some resources you found this week? I’d love to see them! Post them in the comments below.
