Thursday, May 18, 2023

Faculty of Arts launches 2023-2030 strategic plan

A message from the Faculty of Arts.

It’s official. Arts has a new strategic plan: A Future for Humanity: Faculty of Arts Strategic Plan 2023–2030. After several years of development and pandemic disruptions, the final — and now, strongly endorsed — plan features three Priorities for Change: Building Connection through Interdisciplinarity; Effecting Social Impact; and Fostering Student Agency.

“This plan is intended to bring together the ethos of what we are with the aspirations of what we want to be,” writes Dean Sheila Ager in the plan’s preface. She adds that the plan aligns with the University’s current 2020-25 strategic plan and especially the Waterloo at 100 strategic vision.

At a Strategic Plan Town Hall held in April, the Dean stressed that the new plan stands as a guide for the important next steps of working together to implement its goals and objectives, to engage in refining them as needed, and to measure and report on progress over the plan’s seven-year span.

All faculty and staff members in Arts were invited to endorse the strategic plan via an online ballot that ran from May 1 through May 8. Given that many of the responsibilities for implementation of the plan will fall to both faculty and staff, it was vital that all voices be heard.

Dean Ager notes that recent global events, alongside the strengths and potential of the Faculty of Arts at Waterloo, shaped the priorities of the new plan:

“The past few years have shown us it’s time for change. Not only the pandemic, but continued racism, accelerating climate change, economic uncertainty, war, rapid advances in technology, the spread of misinformation, and the roll-back of human rights highlight the vital need for solutions informed by compassion, empathy, and a concern for the well-being of the individual and the community, locally and globally. The Faculty is now in a better position than ever before to bring to bear our talents in exploring, understanding, and improving the condition of humanity and our planet.”

5 ways to make your communications more accessible

By Elizabeth Rogers.

“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”

— Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.

You may have heard this quote before. In fact, it's more than 25 years old, and this vision of digital inclusion is still something we're working towards today. Every year, Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD) aims to raise awareness about digital access and inclusion. You don’t have to be a developer or wade through the technical requirements – here are a few ways you can include a diverse audience.

1) Include correct captions on your videos. Usability research has shown that people are more likely to watch your videos on social media or on web when they have captions. Whether some is deaf or hard of hearing or simply in a noisy environment, captions make it easier to perceive what’s being said.

But if you’re relying on auto captioning, you might be in for some surprises including mistaking similar words and a lack of punctuation. Uploading a caption file or transcript file along with your video will help, and some platforms let you edit autocaptions.

For events, lectures and other long videos, you may want to budget for a professional caption editing service.

2) Add alternative text to images. Did you know alt text was originally invented so people using text-only browsers could still access the content of an image? While alt text is still a boon in situations where images don't load, it’s also essential for people who are blind or have visual impairments.

NASA was recently praised for its rich, descriptive alt of telescope images, but we don't have to go into that level of detail. A good question to ask yourself is: if someone can't see this image, what information or meaning are they missing?

Many tools including the WCMS and Emplifi easily allow you to add alt text. In cases where you can't (such as some social media platforms), you can add an image description to the body of your post.

3) Use descriptive link text. Links are visually distinctive on a page and attract attention – think of it like someone highlighting something important in the text – but people using screen readers might also scan all the links on a page. Link text such as “click here” or “read more” can be changed to provide more context.

For example, instead of saying "The latest Report Giving is available online", try "The latest Report on Giving is available now"; (you don't need to say "online" - it's a hyperlink, after all.) Think about what is important for readers to know. You can even use the title of the destination page.

Links can appear within the text, or as a separate list. If something is really important, consider a call-to-action button instead. (For instance, "apply now")

4) Use tables for data, columns for layout. In the early days of webpages, tables were used for layout purposes, but the technology has evolved. Using a table to lay out content makes it needlessly cumbersome for someone using a screen reader, and it won’t display well on a mobile device. Use columns instead.

When you’re using tables, a caption or description can help people anticipate what they'll learn from the table, and the table headers make a big difference in how content is displace across devices and heard by people using screen readers.

5) Create content with the audience and channel in mind. With the availability of free programs such as Canva, it's easy to design a poster for an event or course you want to promote. However, posters that work well on walls aren't ideal for social media or web. The heavy amount of text is difficult of most people to read, especially on a phone, and it’s a lot of content to put in alt text. Magnifying the image may pixelate and distort the text, and any QR codes or links in the image aren’t usable.

Instead, use design elements from the poster - the image and font, for instance - and adapt them for social media and web. For instance, consider WCMS event best practices and find a good social media image sizes cheat sheet.

Learn more

• Digital Accessibility Guide (part of the Waterloo Inclusive Style Guide)
• Accessible Social

Recent work in Arts:

• The importance of the humanities in inclusive innovation: Alumnus Samantha Estoesta (MA '15, BA '13) looks at how ssking the right questions at the start of every development and design phase of a product is critical to inclusive innovation.
• Creating a technologically inclusive model of disability: Recent philosophy PhD graduate Dr. Lynne Sargeant is breaking new ground in disability studies.

New Land Skills for Wellness and Sustainability project launches

A message from the Faculty of Environment.

There is a crisis in mental health at Canadian universities which is intimately interlinked with sustainability. We know that connection to the natural world and to supportive communities is a requirement for both sustainability and well-being, yet the academic environment is increasingly virtual, cerebral and can be isolating and competitive, trends which have increased since the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a new project spearheaded by PhD student Jim Jones from the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability and Dr. Steffanie Scott from the School of Geography and Environmental Management aims to address this issue.

The newly funded project, Land Skills for Wellness and Sustainability (LSWS), builds on the evidence that both mental health and attitudes to sustainability can be improved by connection to nature and nature-based activities, such as making from natural materials and engagement in “flow” activities where opportunities for material consumption are replaced by mindful experiences. With an emphasis on experiential learning, students, staff and faculty will be invited to a series of workshops this spring term to learn the benefits of green woodworking, basket weaving, scything, nature weaving, herbal tea making and nature walks. After each activity, there will be an opportunity for participants to increase their knowledge, clarify their values, and develop capacity and skills to contribute to their communities.

Running concurrently with the workshops, research will be conducted into the changing attitudes of participants as they engage with these land-based skills. Stay tuned to the LSWS webpage for more details and to register for workshops.

The project is funded by the Waterloo Sustainability Action Fund in partnership with the Ontario Land Skills Network.

Cherry trees line Huber Lane and other momentous milestones

Photos by Sam Charles.

A line of Japanese flowering cherry trees were planted on the University's South Commons yesterday near the Grad House as the first phase of Huber Lane takes shape. Named for recently-retired Vice-President, Administration and Finance Dennis Huber (Do we do Vice-President, Emeritus here at Waterloo?), a section of green space on the Grad House green is being transformed with plantings, benches, and rocks to create a peaceful retreat in the heart of campus. 

Huber Lane was announced at Dennis's retirement celebration back in December 2022, in recognition of his unwavering commitment to provide students with space to study and relax. Dennis was on hand at yesterday's planting, sporting an impressive retirement beard, and even pitched in to dig a hole for the first cherry tree to go in.

Speaking of the Grad House, friends and colleagues of Dave McDougall, longtime WUSA staff member, will gather at the Grad House for a retirement celebration. McDougall, currently WUSA's Director of Student engagement and a former University of Waterloo Staff Association (UWSA) president (careful mixing up those acronyms) retires after a 30+ year career at the University. The retirement reception starts at 4:00 p.m. today.

Across campus on the other side of Columbia Lake, an open house, reception and renaming ceremony will be held today for the Eric D. (Ric) Soulis Memorial Weather Station, which recently celebrated its 25^th anniversary. It is being named for the late Professor Ric Soulis, who was a driving force behind the establishment of the weather station near Columbia Lake. Civil and Environmental Engineering invites the University community to an open house beginning at 3:30 p.m. today that includes tours of the facility, and the short renaming ceremony that will start at 4:30 p.m. The weather station is accessible from Westmount Road.

Cupcakes and refreshments will be served. Register for the open house online.