In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn how to research so project managers will listen, find a free accessibility testing webinar, discover what the co-creator of CSS thinks of CSS art, 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
Things that don’t exist:
— Chris Heilmann (@codepo8) July 14, 2022
🦄 Unicorns
🦶🏽 Bigfoot
🐉 Dragons
☑️ Software that automates website accessibility
User Experience
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User research leader Lindsay Wallace explains how to research so pms will listen, highlighting the challenges in getting project managers to incorporate research findings and insights into their planning and strategy. One recommendations: ask project managers what problems are you hoping this research will solve for you?
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Measuring U analyzed the annual UXPA salary survey to learn what methods UX professionals use in 2022. One key finding: while usability testing was the most used UX method from 2011 to 2018, user research was the top method in 2022.
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David Morneau discusses how applying the 7 principles of human psychology can improve your website’s user experience. Are you familiar with the isolation effect and choice overload? Morneau explains each principle and how you can leverage it in your design.
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Excited to learn my friend Carol Smith is co-chair of the Information Architecture Conference (IAC) 2023! Congrats!
#IAC23 is excited to announce our incoming co-chairs @bernirizarry @jeffpass and @carologic Let the planning and creation begin! Can’t wait to hear what this team cooks up for the 2023 #InformationArchitecture Conference pic.twitter.com/mrkrUo2PkH
— IAC – information architecture conference #IAC22 (@theiaconf) July 8, 2022 -
Matt Rafalow, research manager at YouTube, shares his journey as a sociologist transferring his skills to user experience research and finding his place in the tech industry.
Accessibility
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Denis Boudreau has launched his series of Inclusive Speaking Tips, providing tips and tricks to become a more inclusive communication professional. This week’s tip is a reminder about the language we use in our writing and speech: avoid ableist language.
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Automated accessibility web services like accessibility overlays create more issues than they resolve, says Patrick Perdue, a radio enthusiast who is blind. In for blind Internet users, the fix can be worse than the flaws, Perdue and other blind people describe the troubles and problems they encounter on websites when companies use automated accessibility tools.
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Woohoo, congratulations to my colleague Glenda Sims as she is promoted to Chief Information Accessibility Officer (CIAO) at Deque Systems, the first CIAO for the company.
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What do you know about screen readers? Not how to use them, but how they came to be created? I learned a lot from the hidden history of screen readers. Including how one of the first screen readers read out the characters of a word. One character at a time.
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Good news! Twitter announced the launch of their image description reminder. For folks who forget to add image descriptions (alternative text) when they tweet, you can now turn on the image description reminder on Android, iOS, and the web.
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Join TPGi on July 20, 2022 when they host their Best Practices to Structure Accessibility Testing free webinar. You’ll learn the pros and cons of different automated accessibility testing libraries, limitations of automated testing, how to bridge the gap between automated and manual testing, and how to track progress on errors.
WordPress
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The WordPress 6.0.1 maintenance version was released this week, fixing 31 bugs. If your sites support automatic background updates, they will have been automatically updated.
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Call for speakers for WooSesh 2022 ends today, July 15, 2022. Submit your talk proposal with case studies, tutorials, or demonstrations for a 25-minute pre-recorded session today. Note: WooSesh is October 14, 2022.
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Share your feedback! What are your thoughts and ideas on how the WordPress.org homepage and download page should display? What content do you want displayed on those pages?
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Check out Gutenberg Changelog #69 where Birgit Pauli-Haack and Mary Job chat with Jorge Costa about Gutenberg Releases, WordPress 6.0.1, the Create Block Theme plugin, and more. (57-minute podcast with transcript)
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Not surprised there’s pushback to WordPress themes team contributors about the proposal to improve block themes’ visibility in the directory. Your thoughts? Given Full Site Editing is considered beta, I don’t think it should be given more visibility at this time.
CSS and HTML
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Geoff Graham from CSS-Tricks discusses Robin Rendle’s In Praise of Shadows essay to highlight how Rendle used CSS for centering, background images, stacking contexts, and scroll snapping.
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Offer a faster website and user experience for your website visitors. Learn how to convert images to WebP format. Keypoint: if you’re using a content delivery network, it’s likely your images are already being served in WebP format.
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Ahmad Shadeed takes a closer look at how Figma uses CSS, specifically Flexbox and Grid. Sharing examples and code, Shadeed explains the design tab, alignment buttons, auto layout and layer panel rows.
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In the second edition of Chrome Dev Insider, Rachel Andrew chats with Nicole Sullivan and Una Kravets about Chromes’s support for CSS and user interface developers.
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What does the co-creator of CSS, Håkon Wium Lie, have to say about the beautiful art and imagery created with CSS? [less than two-minute video]
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I agree with Chris Ferdinandi. When it comes to creating websites and web apps, fundamentals matter. HTML, CSS, and JavaScript may change over time. But they always matter.
What I Found Interesting
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Absolutely stunning images from NASA’s James Web Space Telescope were released this week. Their extended image descriptions for the photos are incredible.
Today, we present humanity with a groundbreaking new view of the cosmos from the James Webb Space Telescope – a view the world has never seen before
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Preventing bird collisions is a top concern for airplane pilots and airports. Which is why the airport in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada came up with a solution: a robotic Peregrine Falcon. Learn more in the short (two-minute) Birds and Robots podcast from BirdNote Radio.
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Woohoo! Detroit was named one of Time Magazines Greatest Places of 2022.
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