Wednesday, September 3, 2025

Digital cleanup and web governance initiative looks to transform Waterloo's webspace

A message from Greg Smith, Chief Information Officer and Michael Dorr, Associate Vice-President, Marketing and Brand Strategy.

This update outlines a plan to begin removing out-of-date and inaccessible content from our digital platforms, to be led by University Relations (UR) and Information Systems & Technology (IST) while engaging campus communicators along the way.

This clean-up pertains to public-facing digital content (e.g. public webpages on uwaterloo.ca, social media accounts).  A process for internal sites or academic learning platforms (e.g. LEARN, Portal) is currently under assessment in partnership with the Accessible Teaching, CTE and TII teams.

There are two major factors driving this initiative to clean-up digital content:

• Accessibility: we continue to advance the university’s Digital Accessibility initiative – to date, we have made great strides (with a positive compliance with AODA as of Dec 31, 2024). That said, much more work is needed. Specifically, we currently have staggering 30,000 PDFs (many of which are inaccessible) on the University of Waterloo’s website. This clean-up is helping to serve the over-arching goal for digital accessibility – “to promote a culture where all digital content is designed with accessibility in mind, up front”. Cleaning up inaccessible PDFs will help us deliver against this goal.    
• Usability: the Functional Review report described our digital footprint as “proliferated”, with 750,000+ individual pages (over 875 WCMS websites), 3,000+ WCMS content publishers and over 200+ (as of August 2025, those numbers have gone up to 350+) social media accounts, all of this resulting in a “poor user experience”. In short, we need to reduce content while developing stronger governance practices relating to roles, responsibilities and processes for managing the university’s digital presence.  In addition to this, recent research (conducted by Academia via MUR) highlighting that prospective students find our website “difficult to navigate.”  Reducing content will help us move toward more curated and usable web content for our key audiences.

With these 2 driving factors in mind UR and IST is kicking off an assessment of web sites/pages (WCMS) and social media accounts. To be clear, we will not delete any content without engagement with content owners / web leads / social media leads across campus.

Accessibility clean-up is underway after close consultation with the Digital Accessibility steering committee, Digital Accessibility Community of Practice leads as well as the Campus Accessibility office. We are currently in the process of grouping the 30,000 PDFs to help organize clean-up efforts. UR will also provide PDF removal and re-linking support through extra co-op hires – with the goal of starting the actual document removal in September 2025.

This memo is intended to be a “heads-up” that this work is coming. We commit to developing a process that is clear and transparent and collaborative.   Collaboration is key: we are asking for anyone who oversees digital content (primarily web and social) to begin to think through your own content and identify candidate pages or social accounts for potential removal or consolidation.

If you want to engage

If you are interested in being part of this initiative and would like to help inform our protocol and future governance, please reach out to UR (Nem Rađenović) and IST (Mike Gašpić).

Test of the emergency notification system coming tomorrow

On Thursday, September 4, the emergency notification system (ENS) provided by Regroup will be tested on a campus-wide basis. 

The test will include the following communications channels: 

• SMS/text 
• Email
•  X (formerly Twitter) 
• Regroup Mobile (safety app) 
• Desktop Alert 
• Campus Safety webpage 

Please ensure that you have:

1. downloaded Regroup Mobile to your device and follow the login and recommended settings steps,
2. ensured your cell phone number is up to date either in the app if you are staff, or in Quest if you are a student,
3. downloaded and installed the Desktop Alert tool onto your computer if your computer is not managed by the University.

If you have any questions about the upcoming test, or about how to make sure Regroup’s app and desktop alert are installed properly on your devices, email ens@uwaterloo.ca.

Notes as the fall term begins

Today marks the first day of the 2025 fall term, with lectures and classes commencing across campus even as Orientation events continue. Drop-in events are taking place across campus to accommodate the schedules of Waterloo's busy students, and tomorrow, WUSA's First Year Fair will take place on the SLC green from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

The Centre for Community, Clinical and Applied Research Excellence (CCCARE) is currently offering 6-week, single-day fitness classes exclusively for UWaterloo employees, held in a private on-campus facility under the guidance of registered kinesiologists and certified exercise professionals. "You can choose from two programs—Functional Strength and Fitness (improving strength, mobility, and health; $89 + HST) or Functional Boot Camp (dynamic 30-minute sessions blending cardio, strength, and mobility ($59 + HST)," says a note from CCCARE. "Waterloo staff benefit from a 25 per cent discount via the Staff Excellence Fund Subsidy." 

Employers hosting Employer Information Sessions this week and next week include Leap Tools, Ontario Teachers Pension Plan, AXL, Definity Insurance, EY (Actuarial Science Event), Hatch, Manulife (Actuarial Science Night), Fairfax Financial & Co, EY (Consulting Event), Scotiabank. Canada Life Assurance, Capital One, TD (CPA Event), WTW, 8090 Solutions, Deloitte, Citadel, Citadel Securities, Bloomberg, Equitable Bank, Genesys, and TD Bank. Make sure to register through WaterlooWorks and check the calendar for any updates.