Web Advisory Committee meeting (February 19, 2014)

February 19, 2014 –  MC 2018 – 3:00 p.m. 

Present:

Terry Stewart (Chair), Darren Bondy (Secretary), Amy Aldous, Logan Atkinson (guest), Marta Bailey, Tanya Balian Bedrossian,  Chris Francis, Marlon Griffith,  Karen Jack, Jim Johnston, Andrew McAlorum, Tammy Marcinko, Collin McIntyre, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Liam Morland, Rose Padacz, Elizabeth Rogers, Megan Saunders, Susan Shifflett, Andrew Smith, Andrea Sweet, Jason Testart (guest), Katharine Tuerk, Victoria Van Cappellen, Heather Wey, Jonathan Woodcock (guest), Virginia Young

Regrets:

Daniel Allen, Janice Cooke, Amy Meredith, Kris Olafson

Absent:

Dave Annable, Herbert Balagtas, Donald Duff-McCracken, Nigel Henriques,  Paul Miskovsky

1. Canadian Anti-spam Legislation (Logan Atkinson)

Logan Atkinson is the University Secretary and recently added the duties of General Counsel to his portfolio. He attended to provide information on the Canadian Anti-spam Legislation (CASL) which comes in to effect on July 1, 2014.

  • The CASL prohibits sending commercial electronic messages unless sender has consent.
  • A commercial electronic message is considered to be a message that encourages participation in a commercial activity.
    • It is unclear what that means for the University; the overarching mission of the University is education but that does not necessarily mean our messages are not considered commercial.
  • Two forms of consent: Expressed and implied.
    • ​Expressed consent (stating that they wish to receive these messages) lasts forever (or until they unsubscribe).
    • Implied consent is given through an existing relationship (business or non-business) and only lasts two years after last transaction has taken place.
  • ​Even when consent is given, there are technical requirements, such as having a readily accessible unsubscribe mechanism as well as other technical requirements.
  • Another example is web forms. On web forms the default for receiving communications from the University needs to be “unchecked.” The user must opt-in to as opposed to having to opt out.There are lots of questions surrounding the relationship of the student with the university that still need to be addressed.
  • There is no stipulation as to the number of people on a commercial e-mail.  Even an e-mail to an individual could be considered as spam.

Questions (submitted via e-mail)

Q. Is there a communications plan centrally for informing the University community about CASL legislation?

A. Not yet. Atkinson has addressed Executive Council about this and has asked members to give it thought and consult with their staff to help identify where the “hotspots” are on campus.

Q. Will there be a standard disclaimer developed that we can put in the footer of all messages sent via our mailing list software?

A. The word "disclaimer" is not the right term. In our messages, we cannot deny if it’s a commercial message. But we are looking into developing standard unsubscribe language for use in e-mails. There are also circumstances where we may not want people to unsubscribe (i.e. Emergency notification e-mails) so we need to think about the appropriate circumstances to use it.

Q. How do we deal with existing mailing lists to conform to the legislation? As an example, Engineering Science Quest has 6000 e-mail addresses. Will we have to get consent from each of those 6000 individuals?

A. If the messages, we are sending them, are considered commercial messages, then yes we need to get consent. We need to figure out some way to do this.

Q. What documentation/backend support do we need to do to be compliant? For example, will we be required to track each addition and deletion from a mailing list? If so, will there be any tools to help with this?

A. No easy answer to this question, but yes we do need to track changes in subscriptions so that people who unsubscribe do not receive e-mails. As to how this is to be done remains to be seen and will be worked on.

Q. How does the exemption “sent by or on behalf of registered charities for fundraising purposes” affect UW?

A. The federal government has agreed to exempt charities from this legislation if they are sending out messages for fundraising purposes. Still discussing how that affects the University. 

2. Chair’s Remarks (Terry Stewart)

The Chair thanked Atkinson for attending and providing excellent information on CASL. 

The Chair is pleased to announce that Don Duff-McCracken has been appointed by Web Steering as the new Chair of Web Advisory.  Don will start in this position at the May meeting. 

3. Approval of Minutes.

The minutes of January 2014 were approved as posted.

​4. Busines​s Arising

None.

5. Waterloo CMS Update (Heather Wey/Liam Morland)

Training update (Heather Wey)

  • Skills for the Electronic Workplace (SEW) courses for March and April will come out next week.
  • There has been some feedback regarding the “Writing for Web” course that it is too focused on the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). The course focus will be adjusted but the prerequisite now will be the “Introduction to Accessibility” course.
  • Investigating a live chat tool for training and assistance purposes. The plan is to pilot it on the Web Resources site.
  • Investigating possibly creating online training videos for SEW courses. One concern regarding this training method is whether or not it would be an acceptable alternative to the hands-on SEW courses.
  • There will be a WCMS update at the Friday morning seminar on February 21, 2014. 

​CMS update (Heather Wey for Kris Olafson)

  • V1.8 release: Lots of new features and functionality added to events as well as other additional features.
    • New ability to add tags to events (event type, and open tags).
    • Filterable for date type and audience.
    • Sidebar items can be collapsed.
  • ​Mailman widget that can be used to sign up for mailing lists.
  • Added 3 column template in the footer.

Accessibility Update (Liam Morland)

Morland showed a YouTube clip done by the University that displays the flaws with the auto-caption abilities of YouTube.

Regarding the request to Investigate the Beanstream system for accessibility, Morland reported that there are quite a few issues with the interface. Screen readers may have a difficult time reading the interface properly.

6. Marketing and Strategic Communications Update (Andrea Sweet)

Implementation of  the new Digital Asset Management system in the Library, IST and Engineering is progressing. Will have a more detailed update at the next meeting.

​7. Web Accessibility Compliance project (Jonathan Woodcock)

Woodcock presented on the Web Accessibility Compliance project (WACP). Topics included: 

  • Overview
  • Objectives
  • Timeline and Strategy
  • Status

View Woodcock’s full presentation on the Web Accessiblity Compliance Project Update (Powerpoint).

8. Open Journal Publishing (Andrew McAlorum)

McAlorum presented on Open Journal Publishing. Topics included:

  • Open Access
  • Open Journal Systems (OJS)
  • University of Waterloo Library Journals

View McAlorum’s full presentation on Open Journal Publishing 

9. Next M​eeting 

  • 3:00-4:30p.m., March 19, 2014. MC 2018 a/b

10. Meeting Adjourned at 4:30 p.m.