October 16, 2020: My Weekly Roundup of Web Design and Development News

In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll learn about the World Usability Day 2020 Design Challenge, find out how to improve digital accessibility at your business, discover how to create flexible and fluid typography, 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 times of stress, the best thing we can do for each other is to listen with our ears and our hearts and to be assured that our questions are just as important as our answers.”

— MisterRogersQuotes (@MisterRogersSay) October 16, 2020

User Experience

• Who hasn’t encountered a ballot that was confusing? In the Washington Post’s defeat bad ballot design and make sure your vote counts, learn how designers often hide races in plain sight and what you as a voter can do to make sure you vote in all races.
• What I experienced when marketing took over our college web services team.
  

  I believe one of the biggest reasons UX is often sidelined and/or devalued in an organization is due to lack of patience.

  Execs/higher-ups want to see immediate results, but as I always say, thoughtful design takes time.

  True UX is less about output and more about outcome. #ux

  — Jason Ogle (@jasonogle) October 9, 2020

• Assumptions about names and identities in our designs can cause problems for users when we don’t think carefully of the consequences. Design for inclusion says Mattie Behrens. Names and identities change, you should design for that.
• For this year’s World Usability Day 2020 Design Challenge, you can propose a user-centered solution focusing on post pandemic-related problems. Deadline is November 12, 2020 and monetary prizes ($1,250 for first place, $1,000 for second place, $750 for third place) will be awarded December 1, 2020.

Accessibility

• NV Access announced the release of NVDA 2020.3 (free screen reader for Windows), with performance and stability improvements as well as new settings to toggle touchscreen support and graphics reporting.
• Congrats to Ian Hamilton for winning the GameDev Heroes 2020 Unsung Hero Award for his accessibility advocacy. Well deserved!
  
• In their 30-minute conversation about accessibility: the missing MVP requirement, Claudio Vera, senior analyst of accessibility at Royal Caribbean and Alberto Orsini of Stark discuss how we can include accessibility in our process, why accessibility needs to be included in your project from the beginning, and what we can expect in the future.
  

  It’s about really genuinely changing the quality of people’s lives.

• From the technology you use to procurement policies to accessibility statements, there’s no better place to improve digital accessibility at your business than Elizabeth Taub’s Digital accessibility is essential to the employment of people with disabilities post for National Disability Employment Awareness Month.

WordPress

• The new home screen introduced in WooCommerce 4.3 is now the default for new and existing WooCommerce stores. In the past, the new home screen was the default only for new stores.
• Handy guide from Blogvault explaining what to do when the Can’t Access WordPress Admin error displays on your website. My first steps are similar to theirs: clear your cache, refresh the page, and try a different browser.
• I remember when we had a speaker at our Metro Detroit WordPress meetup explaining how to install themes, but didn’t know what FTP was or how to use it in WordPress. Not every WordPress user knows about FTP, which is why I’m glad Tom Rankin wrote this basic guide on how to use FTP for WordPress (and why you should).
• Starting October 24, 2020 you will no longer be able to embed Facebook and Instagram content using oEmbed methods. And your existing embeds on your site will no longer work, unless you take action. WPBeginner offers two solutions (one with plugins, the other requires developer help) to fix the Facebook and Instagram oEmbed issue.

CSS and HTML

• Creating flexible and fluid typography is a lot easier, thanks to this helpful post from Una Kravets on min(), max(), and clamp(): three logical CSS functions to use today
• Designing with accessibility in mind means focus states need to be visible, says Matthias Ott as he explains how you can use :focus-visible pseudo-class for focus styles.
  

  Providing strong visual indicators that highlight the element that currently has keyboard focus is therefore indispensable.

• Did you know you can create a realistic motion blur with CSS transitions? I didn’t. Fascinating to learn how Neale Van Fleet used 20 identical copies with small changes in transition-delay value to create the blur.
• Craig Buckler highlights the various options available to you for creating and testing responsive web design cross-browser compatibility, including media queries, CSS grid and flexbox, online testing services, and mobile emulators.

What I Found Interesting

• Frustrated with Zoom’s virtual background not working as you expected in your videoconference calls? My friend Rob Huddleston recommends leveling up your Zoom meetings with a backdrop. For only $65 US dollars, the backdrop is affordable and easy to set up.
• That song you can’t remember the title to? Google lets you hum that song stuck in your head and tell you what it is. I hummed, it works!
• Nice! DuckDuckGo now has interactive driving and walking directions with privacy protection.

If you like what you’ve read today, share the post with your colleagues and friends.

Want to make sure you don’t miss out on updates? Subscribe to get notified when new posts are published.

Did I miss some resources you found this week? I’d love to see them! Post them in the comments below.