Web Advisory Group Home > Minutes > 4 August 2004

Minutes - 4 August 2004

Present: Hennig (minutes), Duke, Edelman, Quirion

1. Home page photo stripes

The group reviewed photos that were taken by Stephen Skuce for possible use in the photo stripe on our home page. These were based on ideas sent in by our staff.

Stripes already used:
- Music library staircase
- Date stamp
- Wright brothers/Archives

Current stripe:
- Edgerton notebooks/Archives

Possibile upcoming stripes:
- Faces of staff (Darcy working on mockup & email to send to staff asking for volunteers)
- Lego Mars Rover from Lindgren (in progress)
- Music Library display case (in progress) - Darcy & Christine will reshoot to try for better photos
- Barker dome (use shot from existing photo tour)
- Preservations services photos (we selected 3 that Stephen took and 1 from their staff web site to work with - we'll try to narrow to 1)
- Tim the Beaver photos from Heather (we selected 4 and will experiment with these, narrowing to 1)
- Aero library glass etchings (need to re-shoot these)

Nicole and Darcy will mock up some samples to send to the group from the list above. We will aim to coordinate Tim the Beaver with Library week and faces of our staff with the beginning of the school year.

 

2. Home page features for improving accessibility

The group reviewed changes mocked up by Nicole that we discussed at our last meeting.

Structural header tags: We added H1 and H2 tags to the home page and used CSS to style them so nothing changes visibly. These will help people using screen readers, such as Jaws. Nicole will make these live later today.

Color contrast issues: We experimented with possible color changes for certain text on our home page to make it pass the automated color contrast tool shown to us by the ATIC lab staff. We were not able to find a satisfactory solution that would make enough difference for color-blind users without adversly affecting the page usability for most users. Nicole will get back to them with our thoughts & questions about this. Other tools that show the page simulated for color blind users seem to indicate that it's still readable.

Font size test: We experimented with increasing the default font size on the home page. We decided this would push the page too far down for people on smaller screens, such as laptops, so we're leaving it as is for now, but will re-evaluate during future usability tests. In the meantime users can always increase the size by adjusting it in their browser.

 

3. Access keys for home page, Vera, and Barton

We worked with Tracy to coordinate access keys between the home page, Vera, and Barton. We have a page that explains the access keys. We discussed improvements for this page and places to link to it from. We'll make this page live when the Barton access keys are implemented, probably next week. The access keys are already live on our home page and the Vera home page.

Next meeting:

Wednesday, August 18, 2-3:30, Barker Conference Room

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