July 2, 2021 Weekly Roundup of Web Design and Development News

In this week’s web design and development news roundup, you’ll discover why cross-cultural design matters, find out why designers should minimize movement on web pages, learn how to discover hover-capable devices with 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

Okey dokey:

Frontend dev: hard
Backend dev: hard
Writing docs: hard
Html/css: hard
UI design: hard

It’s all hard

It’s also not a competition

— Scott Spence 🌮 (@spences10) July 1, 2021

User Experience

• Know who your users are, their goals, needs, and cultural background as you design products and services, says Sofia Gomes. Don’t underestimate the importance of user research, cross-cultural design matters. Loved the story about the airport bathrooms.
• If you’re thinking of a career in user experience, but don’t know where to start, make time to attend Balsamiq’s free User Experience as a Career webinar on July 15, 2021.
• Like many other people, I don’t want apps to have access to my contacts list.
  

  As a…
  – user
  I want to…
  – invite my friends to sign up for the app
  so that…
  – I can help grow the userbase pic.twitter.com/VCQF2l6Ah6

  — Shit User Story (@ShitUserStory) June 29, 2021

• I’m enjoying the updates from Victoria Axt, who is publishing her response and designs for daily UX challenges in the Become a Better UX Writer in 15 Days writing challenge. My favorite so far? Day 3.

Accessibility

• Results of WebAIM’s Screen Reader User Survey #9 have been published, always a fascinating read. Two findings stood out for me: JAWS increased in usage while NVDA and VoiceOver decreased; over 60% of respondents believe web accessibility has stalled or hasn’t changed in the past year.
• Did you know by prioritizing web accessibility, you improve your search engine optimization (SEO)? David Oltean explains the importance of accessibility for SEO, highlighting metadata, transcripts, captions, and image alternative text.
• Speaking of image alternative text, Chris Ferdinandi discusses images and screen reader users and why you don’t want to use the title attribute for describing images.
• Excellent advice from the Royal National Institute of Blind People, written for 2021 Social Media Day (but applies to everything your write):
  

  Don’t go emoji crazy, as text to speech software reads out a description for every single emoji used. pic.twitter.com/QT1x7g0K0h

  — RNIB (@RNIB) June 30, 2021

• Creating accessible products and services benefits everyone says Christian Heilmann in the unseen benefits of accessibility. For example, Heilmann learned English using captions and subtitles from TV shows.
• As Julieanne King explains in the latest A11y Rules Podcast seven-minute episode, moving content on a web page can distract her, cause her to lose focus, raise stress and anxiety.
  

  Yeah, it can literally derail me for a couple of hours it takes, it’s sort of related to like when you’re trying to do deep focus, and you’re really in that place.

WordPress

• The WordPress 5.8 first release candidate is available for download and testing. Can you help test before the scheduled release later this month?
• One of the most waited features in WordPress: Widgets will be available in WordPress 5.8 through the block editor. Eric Karkovack walks you through how the new Widgets work, new blocks introduced in 5.8, as well as how to continue using your existing widgets.
• As Justin Tadlock explains, block patterns could have a big impact on how footers and headers are included in themes.
  

  Theme developers will be able to steer their own ship, offering a range of choices that are perfectly molded to their designs.

• Local, the free app allowing you to install and build WordPress locally, has made all Local Pro features free for everyone to use.

CSS and HTML

• Supported in all modern browsers, you can now detect hover-capable devices with Level 5 media queries. Thank you for the heads up, Michelle Barker.
• I agree, CSS frameworks are popular, but you can accomplish a lot with basic CSS. Why rely on a framework that hides CSS syntax?
• Do you know what a list sounds like to a screen reader? Helpful tip from Schennink on when to use an unordered list vs. an ordered list.
  

  🔊 What does a list sound like?

  Use the `<ul>` element to create a list of items. Use an `<ol>` if the list items wouldn’t make sense when re-ordered (e.g. IKEA manual).

  Assistive technology will speak the list length, the focussed item bullet or number, and its index. pic.twitter.com/wzX8hBPp85

  — Rik Schennink (@rikschennink) July 1, 2021

• If you’ve ever wondered how to fix a bug in low-resolution mode, when all you have are high resolution monitors, Chris Coyier has a solution. I had no idea the “Open in Low Resolution” option was available in Firefox.
• Be a more responsible developer: consider that some people get nauseous when animations display on a website. Until browsers provide options to reduce motion, add a prefers-reduced-motion media query to your CSS.

What I Found Interesting

• At the United Nations Generation Equality Forum this week, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and TikTok committed to tackle the abuse of women on their platforms. Did you know 38% of women around the world have directly experienced online abuse?
• I need the new Brickit app for all the LEGO bricks in containers in our basement. It will scan your LEGO bricks, provide you a list of cool things you can make, along with the instructions to make them. Hat tip to David Pogue for sharing on Twitter. Sadly, only available on iOS.
• Smashing Magazine has published monthly desktop wallpapers for over ten years, created by artists and designers around the world. The July 2021 desktop calendar edition is lovely, my favorite is the summer evening carousel.

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.