Wednesday, June 15, 2010 - Needles Hall (NH) 3004 - 3:00 pm
Present:
Lara Babalola, Marta Bailey, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Don Duff-McCracken, Guillermo Fuentes, Eva Grabinski, Chris Gray, Lauren Harrison, Adam Hewgill, Janet Janes, Pat Lafranier, Christine Liebig, Tammy Marcinko, Geoff !McBoyle, Paul Miskovsky, Isaac Morland, Kevin Paxman, Wendy Philpott, Terry Stewart (Chair), Evan Truong and Jonathan Woodcock
Absent:
Mary Lynn Benninger, Janice Cooke, Sarah Forgrave, Marlon Griffith, Karen Jack, Jim Johnston, John Kemp, Kris Olafson, and Kelley Teahen
1. Chair's remarks
Thanks to Will (Communications & Public Affairs co-op student) and Jonathan for reworking the University of Waterloo home page to work properly with the Apple iPad. Will and Jonathan will also investigate how much support should be given to mobile devices.
Andrea Chappell, Sarah Forgrave and Alan Kirker will be meeting to discuss YouTube / iTunesU and whether both should be supported. Hopefully a report will be forthcoming for the July meeting.
Kris Olafson and Adam Hewgill brought an agenda item to the Student Technologies Advisory Committee (STAC) with regards to moderated forums /discussions for members of the University of Waterloo campus. Kris and Adam will present their work at the next WAC meeting.
Congratulations to Centre for Extended Learning (CEL) for a well attended and successful open house on Tuesday.
A reminder from Kevin Paxman that if you would like to license your on-campus web server for use with sIFR and the Gotham font, to contact him by email with the host name of your server ASAP.
The University has struck an Accessibility Standards Committee. Terry is a member. This committee is a co-chaired by Bud Walker and Janet Passmore.
There is enough going on in the world of the web at Waterloo to merit meeting in July and August. If you are unable to attend because of vacation, please let Sharon know.
2. Minutes of May 19, 2010 - approved
3. Web redesign (Terry for Sarah)
The team is
- finishing up the information architecture and getting ready to transition to building out wireframes;
- At the same time as the wireframes are being built out, Jon is going start building out basic html wireframes that will form the basis for the next round of interactive usability testing;
- Just wrapped up the paper prototype testing and those results will be shared at the end of June.
- Once the wireframes have been approved, White Whale will begin the build out of all the sites. These will include both faculties and the University of Waterloo homepage. Terry inquired about when Web Advisory Committee will be able to see the wireframes and the html build out?
*Action - Marta will take this request back to the redesign team and report back to WAC.
4. Content Management System (CMS) update (Eva Grabinski)
(PowerPoint file is online.) Eva briefly reported on the work completed to date, this included:
- Defined hardware requirements and started set-up.
- Defined preliminary scope for pilot websites.
- Reviewed CMS requirements for Drupal configuration.
- Continued development of rapid prototypes (event calendar, comments, taxonomy use).
- Held brown bag lunch training sessions which were well attended. Upcoming work from June to September will include:
- Finalizing scope for three pilot websites.
- Communication with other universities.
- Continuing development of rapid prototypes.
- Training in Drupal theming.
- Brown bag training sessions (ended in June).
- Assessing hardware system configuration.
- Planning and implementing Drupal configuration.
- Starting first pilot website.
5. Web Technology Standards Committee update (Paul Miskovsky)
Powerpoint File is online) The Technology Standards Committee has been discussing the Web Video WebM/VP8 and h.264 as emerging HTML5 video standards. As well, the committee has been looking for data that would benefit from being included in or becoming a starting point of an open data initiative on campus. The members are suggesting that the ODI student calendaring should be based on open standards such as a combination of iCal and WebDAV which would be CalDAV. It is suggested that the calendar data could be integrated into a portal/module for ease of use; however data and the application should be separate systems.
Paul will update the committee on these initiatives at the July meeting.
6. DNS Resolution Policy Committee (Terry Stewart)
Computing Technology and Services Committee (CTSC) received and reviewed the comments of the draft report and was approved for submission to the Associate Provost Information Systems and Technology (IST). Recommendation # 3 (subdomains versus folders) will not go forward with the report.
7. Other business
a) Aiming for Accessibility Conference (University of Guelph) [Eva Grabinski]
Many WAC members as well as University of Waterloo staff attended this conference held on June 8-9 - http://www.accessconf.open.uoguelph.ca/default.aspx. The Ontario Government accessibility legislation (Accessibility forOntarians with Disabilities Act [AODA]) includes web standards as part of compliance. Currently requirements would necessitate a hybrid of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level A and Level AA. In the future, it is expected that the requirement will be WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Considering the current CMS project, it was proposed that the project team will begin looking at Level AA for any new website development. This should also include web applications and learning management systems - any technologies with a web interface. It will be significant work but the expected future direction of Level AA will necessitate it and implementing it later would be even more work.
The expected start of the implementation is in 2011 with compliance by 2013. From discussion at the conference, Eva noted the following lessons learned:
- Plan for accessibility while building.
- Education/training is key.
- Validators are not enough.
- Make web forms accessible.
- Avoid Flash.
- Test JavaScript.
- Remember to caption videos.
- Provide accessible documents and alternatives.
b) Seminar and SEW Courses (Pat Lafranier)
The PD seminars are offered by Information Systems & Technology to the campus each Friday, except during July and August. There will be a presentation in July by some of the attendees to the University of Guelph's Accessibilities Conference. Details will be mailed to the UWweb mailing list. Would like suggestions for Skills in the Electronic Workplace (SEW) web-related courses. Accessibilities is an important aspect, and is already mentioned in some of the existing courses. Perhaps a general accessibilities course related to the web should be added. A draft of suggested topics will be presented at the next meeting.
c) Personal web space for students (Guillermo Fuentes)
The Faculty of Arts provides personal web space for all registered students which is not being utilized as much as it should. Guillermo inquired whether a central space could be offered through IST which would provide the space and resources. Currently IST does offer a limited service for all faculty and staff on campus for personal web pages but not for students.
Discussion raised the ultimate question - to whom do we provide these services and what should be provided?
Action: Pat will investigate personal websites IST is providing.
Action: Terry will investigate what types of services are being provided.
8. Next meeting - Wednesday, July 21 - 3:00 pm in NH 3004
*Meeting adjourned - 4:20 pm*
-- TerryStewart - 22 Jun 2010