In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about a helpful checklist for conducting an expert review, find a two-day online accessibility conference, discover practical CSS tips, 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
Here’s your daily reminder that masks make it very hard for some people to understand what you’re saying so please be patient and kind if you’re asked to repeat yourself!! 🤍
— Abigail Heringer (@AbigailHeringer) March 5, 2021
User Experience
- In Why UX Should Still Care About International Design Standards, Paul Brooks explains why the latest updates of ISO 9241-110 offers an opportunity for user experience professionals. The collection of 40 individual standards offers a 65-point checklist, ideal for conducting an expert usability review for websites and applications.
- Less than a month away! UX Camp Spring, the online mini-conference returns Saturday, April 3, 2021. Hosted by Chicago Camps, cost is $10, or pay what you can, and/or buy some free tickets for others (that’s what I did, pay it forward by buying a ticket).
- Helpful! Thank you to Paul Boag and Smashing Magazine for the post highlighting useful usability and user interface design tools for your projects. First I heard about Survicate, which allows you to embed website surveys in your site as well as send a survey by email or social media.
- Can you help? Take two minutes to complete the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) content survey to help them plan for the UX webinars and short courses that matter to you.
Accessibility
- Love this CSS Tricks video screencast with Chris Coyier and Preety Kumar on how to use the axe DevTools accessibility plugin. Kumar is the founder and CEO of Deque Systems, I had the opportunity to chat with her years ago. Loved the chat between Kumar and Coyier in between the demo and code fixes.
- The web accessibility community has been abuzz with talk of accessibility overlays, specifically the AccessiBe overlay that causes more accessibility issues than it solves.
Treating accessibility as a compliance-only problem is a great way to never actually achieve compliance. This is why overlays will never be a good option
— Karl Groves (@karlgroves) March 4, 2021
- Launching March 11 and 12, 2021, the inaugural two-day axe-con online digital accessibility conference focuses on building, testing, and maintaining accessible digital experiences. You’ll find over 90 speakers in the four-track virtual conference. Did I mention it’s free?
- Less than 10 minutes long, the Writing Good Alt Text video with Jake Archibald and Surma from Google Chrome Developers discuss what to include in an image’s alt text. Key point: context matters.
- Useful for every developer involved with testing mobile apps, the MDN Web Docs mobile accessibility checklist offers a concise list of requirements for color, visibility, focus, text equivalents, handling state, and orientation.
WordPress
- The second release candidate for WordPress 5.7 is available for download and testing. Can you help?
- In one of the latest videos of the WP Buffs AMA video series, host Allie Nimmons talks with Maddy Osman about content creation [54-minute video], how authors can differentiate themselves on a common topic, tools for creating better content, and more.
- Do you get as annoyed with plugin nag notifications messages in your WordPress dashboard? I do, they’re distracting. Which is why I’m excited about Unagi, a new WordPress plugin that helps keep your admin dashboard clean by moving those notification messages to a dedicated notification page.
It’s a zero-configuration plugin, just activate and rid of the nags.
- After moving to a static site, Ru Singh explains why they’re waving a thankful goodbye to static websites and returning to using WordPress. Why? Two major reasons: the time it takes to maintain a static website and implement features that come out-of-the-box with WordPress.
CSS and HTML
- Depending on your website, you may discover mobile traffic accounts for over 50 percent of your web traffic. Which is why mobile web testing matters, says Kelvin Omereshone. Key areas to focus on: improving search engine visibility and accessibility.
- Glad to learn Josh Comeau has updated his the importance of learning CSS article, which explains why JavaScript developers should learn CSS. While focused on JavaScript developers, his article offers explanations on why some people get frustrated learning CSS. The list of free resources at the end is a gold mine of helpful info.
- Avoid creating your own validation.
The lesson from default browser validation being badly implemented should not be that millions of web developer try to implement their own validation.
It should be that we as the web dev community push for better implementation.
— Eric Eggert (@yatil) March 5, 2021
- Did you know about Style Stage, the website created by Stephanie Eckles? It’s a successor to Dave Shea’s CSS Zen Garden project, where you use the same HTML for a site, but change the design using CSS. Her one-hour video session on building a Style Stage theme shares practical CSS tips for your projects.
What I Found Interesting
- Shoutout to Detroit by USA Today’s readers, for recognition of the Detroit Riverwalk as the best riverfront in the United States. (It’s one of my favorite places!) Christy McDonald of our Detroit public broadcasting station interviewed Mark Wallace, president of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, about the award and future riverfront plans.
- I hadn’t heard of Venom before I read this article. Now I’m intrigued with their BlackBook product, with great performance, a mechanical back-lit keyboard, and their commitment to combatting e-waste by paying you $500 for your seven-year-old laptop.
- What a surprise to learn hey.com is offering blogging via email. (Thanks, Tom McFarlin) Wait. That sounds familiar. It’s exactly why I loved using Posterous, another blogging platform that had the same principle. I was sad when Twitter bought Posterous and closed it down.
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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.
