In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about focusing on the voice of the user, find out how to identify common accessibility issues, discover logical properties in CSS , 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
In 99% of cases the word “utilise” should just be “use” and this is the hill I will die on
— Charlotte Jee (@charlottejee) July 28, 2021
User Experience
- As designers, we can create a more inclusive experience, says Angie Fu. Designing for today’s behaviors and tomorrow’s potential means leaving your biases behind to focus on listening to the voice of the user.
- Adobe published their guide to inclusive UX writing, with specific sections for writing about people and writing for readability. Good reminders for choosing words consciously, using “help” rather than “assist.” Worth bookmarking.
- Who hasn’t experienced this scenario? We can do better designing customer call support.
As a…
— Shit User Story (@ShitUserStory) July 28, 2021
– customer calling support
I want…
– the thirty second long lo-fi song on repeat for forty five minutes frequently interrupted by a recorded message which invariably makes me briefly think the call is connecting to a human
so that…
– I know my call is important pic.twitter.com/4FDe8mcvWz - I love the storytelling aspect of Growth Design case studies, they’re fun and engaging. In this week’s case study, they showcase Signal and how it could ethically boost their revenues. First step:
if they want people to act, they need to them why. What is their benefit?
Accessibility
- In the first of what I hope will be subsequent announcements from other states, Colorado becomes first state to require state and local government websites to meet accessibility standards.
- Thanks to Jeana Clark for sharing her How to identify common accessibility problems and fix them today talk presentation slides from That Conference. Almost forgot, here’s her list of helpful accessibility resources.
- Did you know?
Your reminder that when an accessibility professional says something is a barrier for “keyboard only users”, this also include most screen reader users. And switch users.
— Nicolas Steenhout (@vavroom) July 28, 2021
A non-negligible group!#a11y - Wondering what all the talk about accessiBe is about? Thuy Doan, a developer at Prodigy Education, provides an excellent overview of what you need to know about the accessiBe debate, how accessiBe works, backlash from the disability community, what you can do to improve/design accessible products, and how the single line of code accessiBe provides does not make an accessible product.
- In addition to selling a website overlay product that doesn’t work to improve accessibility, accessiBe ignores data privacy.
- Congrats to the WordPress Accessibility Meetup Group on their first event! While there’s no recap, you can watch the recording of How to Test your Website for Accessibility Problems or read the transcript.
WordPress
- It’s back! WordCamp US 2021 returns October 1, 2021 for a one-day virtual event. Registration isn’t available yet, but you can subcribe to get the latest news as well as volunteer to help organize the event.
- I was excited last year when I learned about the Event Block plugin from Automattic. Unfortunately I learned it’s not complete, it doesn’t offer crucial features like time zone or time ranges. If you’re interested, Elegant Themes has a good explanation of how the Event Block works.
- A helpful plugin for anyone publishing posts regularly, Justin Tadlock reviews the new Todo List Block which provides a publishing checklist within a post.
- Why did I enjoy reading B.J. Keeton’s post on how much a WordPress site costs? Because they described the range of items as well as their range of costs associated with a WordPress site.
- Full Site Editing offers a lot of potential for WordPress themes, says Eric Karkovack.
Theme authors can include relevant patterns and maybe even some custom blocks that enhance functionality.
CSS and HTML
- Fascinating article by Elad Shechter discussing why CSS absolute units aren’t so absolute. Did you know CSS pixels aren’t equal to a a device’s physical pixels?
The 15.6-inch full-HD screen is 1920 pixels wide but behaves like 1536 pixels. This means that every 1.25 physical pixels act like 1 logical pixel.
- Yes, I sympathize with Nathan Hardy when they comment you can find yourself playing whack-a-mole when you adjust one CSS property only to have something else break in My First CSS: What I Wish I Knew When Starting Out as a Frontender.
- How familiar are you with using attribute selectors in CSS? Chris Ferdinandi shares code examples of how you can target elements on a page with attribute selectors.
- I’ve been using physical CSS properties, like
margin-topandborder-bottomsince I first learned CSS. After reading CSS Logical Properties and Values, I’m going to start using some logical properties in my projects.
What I Found Interesting
- I haven’t attended, but it sounds like an exhibit I would enjoy. For folks in metro Detroit, have you visited the ‘Beyond Van Gogh’ immersive experience at TCF Center in downtown Detroit?
- You can now easily collaborate and share Google Slide presentations with side-by-side viewing in Google Chat.
- Any plans to stay up late over the weekend? While it will be visible for weeks, Sunday night is the best time to see the ringed magnificence of Saturn, when it will be the closest it gets to Earth all year.
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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.
