In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll discover alternatives to in-person UX workshops, learn about headings and accessibility, discover a two-day online WordCamp event, 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
“We need to understand the other side to impact the other side. We become much more effective as humans and leaders when we engage in hearty conversations with those who are different from us, not necessarily to change our opinions, but to build … empathy.” – @DanielLubetzky
— HubSpot (@HubSpot) March 27, 2020
User Experience
- UX researchers sit through a lot of sessions, asking the same questions from multiple participants as they observe them completing tasks. And they can mean we miss things. Jim Ross offers helpful tips for retaining your sanity as a user researcher.
- As we transition to working from home, we need to find alternatives to in-person UX workshops, says Paul Boag.
For a start, at the beginning of a project, I find polls and surveys can be a useful way of gathering feedback from stakeholders and end-users.
- One of the first rules I learned in my user experience classes was the three-click rule: users give up their task if they haven’t found what they’re looking for after three clicks. But that’s not exactly true, says Page Laubheimer.
- Your UX portfolio is your most important asset for your career. Here are three reasons why you should have a UX portfolio and why you need to keep it updated.
Accessibility
- Starting in April 2020, the DAISY Consortium will be offering a free webinar series on accessible publishing and reading for one hour on Wednesdays. Each week a different topic will be discussed.
- My friend Dennis Deacon digs deep into headings and accessibility as he explains the impact of headings on creating accessible content, the importance of marking up headings correctly, and how to write descriptive headings.
- Creating accessible documents in Word is a lot easier when you start with accessibility in mind. Use templates, start with an outline, use built-in styles, and add alternative text for images.
- Thanks to Drake Music for sharing their lessons learned for creating accessible video conference and remote meetings. My favorite tip: use a system that supports captions/subtitles.
WordPress
- Learn how to move your service or existing classes online using the Recurring Payments feature along with the Calendly Block in paid WordPress.com hosting plans.
- Originally planned as an in-person event, WordCamp San Antonio 2020 is now a virtual two-day event. I’m attending, won’t you join me? Did I mention it’s free?
- Share your thoughts by March 27th on WordPress community event changes in the time of COVID-19, including
WordCamp Central providing Crowdcast accounts to WordCamps. - Shoutout to Yoast for publishing a free online training course for the Block Editor. I know many people have hesitated to use the Block Editor, this course will help overcome the learning curve.
CSS and HTML
- While An Event Apart typically releases videos from their events gradually online, they’ve decided to release the remaining videos from An Event Apart DC 2019. All sessions from An Event Apart 2019 are now available.
- With people looking for information and resources from healthcare and government sites, it’s time for those sites to get static, says Eric Meyer. Sites using content management systems (CMS) are crashing from the surge in traffic. Static sites solve that issue.
- The ordered list element has start and reverse attributes, making it handy when you want to customize the start property.
- Thanks to Michele Barker for this online tool to generate compound grids. Enter the number of columns for each of your grids, and they’ll be magically merged into a compound grid.
What I Found Interesting
- As a cellist living in metro Detroit, Irina Tikhonova has played for many local orchestras. With Michigan’s stay at home order, she’s now giving 30-minute performances from her front porch,
- For many people who work with technology, you’ve made the transition to working from home. To help you make it successful, Sitepoint has gathered resources for remote teams, including helpful books and articles.
- Can you write for five minutes? asks Rachel Extance. It may not seem like a lot of time, but your five minutes of writing can be useful and helpful to others.
If you like what you’ve read today, share the post with your colleagues and friends.
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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.
