Web Advisory Committee meeting (November 21, 2012)

November 21, 2012– Needles Hall (NH) 3001 – 3:00 p.m.

Present:

Heather Anderson, Cynthia Breen, Kristy Budd, Natalie Cockburn, Janice Cooke, Harry Dai (Guest), Donald Duff-McCracken, Chris Francis, Alison Gelata, Eva Grabinksi, Chris Gray, Karen Jack, Vadim Kononov, Pat Lafranier, Collin McIntyre, Liam Morland, Kris Olafson, Aamir Pasha (Guest), Megan Saunders, Terry Stewart (Chair), Andrea Sweet, Jeff Voskamp

Regrets:

Marta Bailey, Chris Carignan, Michelle Douglas-Mills, Guillermo Fuentes, Marlon Griffith, Jonathan Woodcock.

Absent:

Amy Aldous, Dave Annable, Jay Athia, Mary Lynn Benninger, Nigel Henriques, Jim Johnston, Tammy Marcinko, Geoff McBoyle, Paul Miskovsky, Isaac Morland, Wendy Philpott, Suzana Pinto.

1. Chair’s Remarks

Membership changes: Jay Athia will be representing IAP at WAC in lieu of John Kemp
Welcome to guests: Harry Dai and Aamir Pasha, co-op students who have been helping out with the Portal and Mobile Accessibility projects. They’re here to support Kris’ presentation on the Portal and Mobile projects – item 5 on the agenda.
Ellen Rethore will be joining us for the December meeting to update members on the Visual Identity work. No doubt you saw the announcement at the Town Hall yesterday that the shield is coming back.
Members of the IT Strategic Plan Task Force will be also be joining us in December to consult with the group and get their feedback on the strategic plan. Natalie will be leading this discussion.
Natalie had agreed to do a “quick knowledge sharing” presentation about the recent Educause conference in December. Due to time constraints in December, she will not be presenting. However, she will do a summary at the Friday morning PDAG seminar on November 30th in MC 2009 at 9:00 a.m.

2. Approval of Minutes.

Minutes of October 2012 were approved without correction.

3. Web Accessibility Working Group Update (Eva Grabinski)

(If you would like a draft copy of the Group's Report, please email Eva.) With web accessibility legislation coming into effect, many staff members have questions about web-accessibility requirements: what the requirements are; how to meet the requirements; training and support available; university governance on web accessibility; etc.. The goal of this working group is to identify and address gaps in information, training and support required for uWaterloo staff pertaining to web accessibility legislation. Some of the more important documents include:

All public facing websites owned by UWaterloo fall under the AODA legislation.

Internal/Intranet Sites use privately and securely fall outside of the scope, questions about providing accessible content for internal/intranet sites can be directed to AccessAbility Services https://uwaterloo.ca/disability-services/

Questions about AODA and web-based/software applications can be directed to Information Systems & Technology (http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/).

Web Resources website https://uwaterloo.ca/web-resources/
Technologies that support Web Accessibility

The WCMS takes care of much of the work of creating websites and ensuring that the website is accessible. But content authors have a responsibility to make their content accessible. The WCMS will assist with tools and tips.

Question and comments:

Q. Does the CLF meet level A? Where do we stand?

A. When it was shipped it might have met the pre requisite, once it was opened it may no longer met the standards.

4. Student Communication Project Updates(Kris Olafson/Natalie Cockburn)

The WCMS and Student Technology teams have recently started working closer together on three projects: Mobile Web Accessibility, Student Portal and Open Data.

The objective of the Mobile Web Accessibility is to find improvements for an optimal user experience across all devices through responsive design and server-side enhancements. The days of a separate mobile site have passed. This will involve many other changes including themes in the WCMS, Google Search Appliance, CAS, etc. All major design changes will go through A/B testing. A mobile development platform was discussed.

The Student Portal Project is currently gathering information. They are contacting other institutions to find out more about their portals. To date, the portals vary greatly in functionality and many are just a collection of links. Perhaps we are not as far behind as we might think. A basic Drupal prototype has been started using HTML5 and a mobile-first responsive approach.

The objective of the Open Data project is to engage students in meaningful development to enhance the quality of technology. Included in its aims are to reduce barriers to student-led projects and build a developer repository to foster access to data.

All three projects are seeking help, input and volunteers in areas such as:

• Design (layout, UI elements, mapping)
• Development (HTML5, CSS, JS, Drupal, .NET)
• UX (feedback on usability across devices)
• Decisions on web delivery vs. app delivery
• Content creation & governance
• Quality assurance and testing
• RFI Review (app development)
• Championing open data in relevant areas
• Use cases to inform data and desired formats
• Identifying and assessing impact of data sources
• Creating resources for the development community and reducing barriers to student development.

If you would like to get involved, please contact Natalie Cockburn (ngcockburn@uwaterloo.ca) or Kris Olafson (kolafson@uwaterloo.ca) before Friday November 30th.

(Kris's and Natalie's PowerPoint presentation is available.)

Questions and Comments

Q. Are we only dealing with websites? Are we going for the low hanging fruit first and working forward?

A. Mobile web apps, looking to provide overall web process, recently an RFI has been put out for modules. In the future allowing student to start to provide modules, for now we would like to create one working group.

Q. Who do you contact to volunteer for help and how much commitment is required?

A. Either Kris Olafson or Natalie Cockburn. The Student Technology and WCMS teams are looking for participants for 3 new working groups. These groups will be assisting with the student portal, mobile solutions and open data initiatives. The working groups will meet for one hour on a bi-weekly basis.

Q. Is there a timeline for RFP?

A. An RFI has been created; it does not close until December 6^th.

Q. Will the option of going back to the home site be considered?

A. Yes, this is important as well.

5. Digital Signage Project (Collin McIntyre)

Recently in ENV, many big screen TV’s have been installed. A decision was needed about what information to show on the screen. ENV decided on a web-based solution. Different templates have been created.The websites can be uploaded to either a Tablet or PC; the information should appear regardless of the device. Recently they have implemented videos and are able to put in single video or multiple ongoing videos. They are looking into making this a working application. Perhaps it could be implemented in the WCMS. ENV is willing to share this but if there is no interest in the rest of campus, it will stay in ENV.

The website for this project is currently not published but if you'd like the URL or to be involved contact Collin McIntyre.

Question and Answer:

Q. Have you spoken with Retail Services? It is believed that a Co-op student is designing Retail Services.

A. No, not yet.

Q. Have you spoken with Steve Carr? He is leading a campus project investigating digital signage and kiosk use.

A. No, not yet.

Q. What about backup when the Internet is down?

A. Currently looking into a solution.

Comment. Physics and Science are 90% interested in the application.

Comment. Housing builds their own hardware; it might be of some interest to take it back to them.

6. Digital Initiatives Report (Chris Carignan, Jonathan Woodcock)

DI's biggest focus of late has been the Emergency Communication. It has been asked by Provost to review Emergency Communication procedures. DI has been training people how to add notices to onsite Emergency Site. Andrea Sweet is working on offsite Emergency Communication page.

They have also committed to designing and providing a new U15 Website. U15 is the top 15 research institutions in Canada. UW's President has volunteered IST to manage project. It will be hosted externally. There are many factors driving it to go external. Currently, DI is meeting with companies to establish realistic time lines. A decision will be made sometime in December.

7. Waterloo CMS Update (Pat Lafranier/Kris Olafson)

Working on agile user site, contact Kris for userid and password.
Audio player blog post; tweaks are being made at this time, not working as well as hoped.
Exploring electric Journals with Conrad Grebel.
Co-op student WCMS training for the winter term. We will be training our 6 WCMS team co-op students on January 3 & 4 from 9:00-noon. If you would like to include your co-op student in that training session contact Heather Wey - hawey@uwaterloo.ca. We have 12 extra spots in the class so this will be offered to the first 12 to contact me.
WCMS 1.5.8 pushed out to all sites Included in this release:
- Added optional "service" content type to list services offered by the area.
- Added optional "project" content type to list projects offered by the area.
- Added the ability to have "wide" web pages, without the right sidebar.
- Added the "special alert" content type, which allows a special alert to be displayed at the top of selected pages; available to site managers and users with the new assignable "special alerter" role.
- The "events" listing page now offers an iCal feed.
- Every site will be able to have its own alert
WCMS Let's Build a Person and Drop-in Lab. Friday, November 23rd between 1pm-3:00 pm or Wednesday, November 28th between 1pm-4:30 pm in MC 2060. Starting at 1pm on both dates, we will discuss a new Person content type to replace the current Contact and Person Profile content types. We would like feedback on what person-related data you would like to store and how you would like it displayed. Afterwards, on the Wednesday session, we are also open to discussing any other feature requests that you may need.
27 more sites have launched in the Waterloo Content Management System (WCMS) since our last update on October 2.

8. Other Business

A discussion was held whether to move the December meeting up a week because people may be leaving early for the Christmas break. There was no opposition to holding the meeting on the scheduled date.

9. Next Meeting

NH 3001, 3:00-4:30p.m., December 19, 2012