October 28, 2022 Weekly Roundup of Web Design and Development News

In this week’s web design and development resources roundup, you’ll find a helpful post of UX resources, learn about a new CSS color space, discover a new initiative for teaching digital accessibility in college courses, 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

Speed is important. Work fast and iterate. People rarely remember the first draft, but everyone remembers the final draft.

Speed is unimportant. People rarely remember how long it took you to do the job, but everyone remembers how well you did the job.

— James Clear (@JamesClear) October 25, 2022

User Experience

• Leon Barnard gives a first glimpse at Wireframing, a new book that will be published soon by A Book Apart. Intended for non-designers, the book focuses on “UI and UX design that teaches enough design to do your non-design job better.”

• In Stakeholder Interviews 101, Sarah Gibbons offers helpful recommendations on why, when, and how to conduct stakeholder interviews. Insights from the interviews provide useful understanding of the project’s landscape to help navigate obstacles before they arise.

• Ronn Levine shares her takeaways from the Don’t Guess What Members Want Associations Council content management strategy panel discussion.

  Don’t plan in silos—keep everyone in the association informed about what is coming up that might be worth developing content about.

• It’s been a while since I’ve found a blog post of resources for folks interested in user experience. For both people new to UX, wanting to improve UX, and those who want to review the basics. Thanks to UX Tweak for their useful post highlighting websites, courses, and tools.

Accessibility

• Did you know an estimated one in four adults in the United States has a disability? Learn how inventor Joshua Miele is creating and designing accessible products for disabled people.

• Clear the clutter from your articles. Postlight Reader is a free browser extension (Chrome, Firefox, and Edge) that removes ads and distractions, leaving a less-cluttered reading view on any website. Users include students who need fewer distractions, and low-vision users who want to reduce the amount of non-essential copy for screen readers

• Braille Works takes a deep dive into how COVID has impacted people with disabilities in the workforce. From a controlled environment, improvements in assistive technology, and no more commuting, remote work has increased employment for people with disabilities.

• In their less than two-minute video, You are not your user, Microsoft Accessibility reminds us of the importance of including disabled people from the beginning of every project. Avoid educational simulations with blindfolds, ear plugs, and wheelchairs. They don’t teach people what it’s like to have a disability; they’re not lived experiences.

• Join the Accessibility Virtual Reality meetup for their November 8, 2022 Live Subtitles in Augmented Reality Glasses with Alex Westner and Paul Mealy. The virtual event is free and captioned.

• This week Teach Access announced a new Open Education Resources (OER) initiative to expand awareness of digital accessibility in college programs. Their Teach Access Curriculum Repository brings more than 250 teaching resources to support teaching accessibility across a wide range of computer science, technology, and design programs.

WordPress

• The third release candidate for WordPress 6.1 is available for download and testing. WordPress 6.1 is scheduled for release on November 1, 2022. Less than a week away!

• Join our Metro Detroit WordPress group on Monday, November 7 when we host Alyssa Dail speaking on Creating a UX Portfolio. Dail will discuss how she used WordPress and Elementor to create her site, what her goals were as well as challenges she faced. The virtual event is free, requires preregistration.

  

• My friend Eric Karkovack discusses how WordPress can appeal to the do-it-yourself (DIY) crowd. First up, create a modern onboarding experience for folks to know what steps to take after installation. It’s one of the most common questions we get from our WordPress meetup members.

• Good time to check your plugins to learn how they’ve implemented lazy loading. In the Structured Data and Performance chapters of the 2022 Web Almanac released this week, data shows WordPress sites may be overusing lazy-loading. Which is causing performance issues.

CSS and HTML

• Have you taken the State of CSS Survey? It closes in a few days. Lea Verou explains why it’s important: the State of CSS Survey helps influence the future of CSS.

• Like some other front-end folks, I find it hard to keep up with all the new features in CSS. How about you? Is there too much CSS now?

• The new CSS Color 4 specification adds more ways to declare colors in CSS. Which means an opportunity for CSS to move from RGB (Red Green Blue) and HSL (Hue Saturation Lightness) to OKLCH color space. Andrey Sitnik explains what OKLCH is and why it’s better than hex, RGB, or HSL. Note: it’s only supported in Safari as of October 2022.

• If you’re not familiar with typography, you may not be aware of the concept of hierarchy. Alma Hoffman takes a close look at the six basic variables that establish typographic hierarchies, discussing how they can transform your content.

• In Day 24 of his 100 Days of More or Less Modern CSS series, Manuel Matuzovic takes a look at the backdrop-filter property. Another first for me, the property allows you to apply CSS filters to the area behind an element. Note: the filters only apply to the background.

What I Found Interesting

• You don’t have to be a developer to join a hackathon. Check out five roles for non-coders at hackathons. Personally, I’m surprised they didn’t include tester in the list.

• Sam Richardson was sleepy and feeling tired. For a couple months. Nothing prepared him for what happened when he finally visited a doctor and had blood drawn. I learned a lot about diabetes from his personal story, a beginner’s guide to diabetes.

• A reminder from my friend Todd Libby: not everyone who attends conferences drinks. Like Todd, I’m one of them. Everyone wants to feel they’re a part of a conference. And conference organizers can make that happen by creating an inclusive event without alcohol.

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.