The ‘font’ of all (intranet) knowledge?
May 6, 2010 at 11:12 am | Posted in best practice, content management, intranet, publishing, standards, usability, web accessibility | Leave a commentTags: accessibility, best practice, bt intranet, content, publishing, standards
This is another example of BT’s intranet standards used to give users a great experience.
Most browsers, and especially those for people with visual impairment, allow users to adjust font sizes to suit their needs. Therefore, it is important that you do not fix font in an exact, or ‘absolute’, size because users may not be able to see it!
Style sheets in content management systems will take care of font sizes, but if you create your own HTML & style sheets, you must use relative sizing, e.g. -1, or +1.
HTML <font> tag
You should use style sheets instead of the <font> tag to define font attributes. If you still have existing <font> tags within your site you should make sure they are relative and not fixed. You must then switch to style sheets at your next re-design.
Using styles for fonts
When using styles also always use the relative tags, such as percentage or plus and minus. For example if you want a headline to be bigger then use something like +2, or 150%, or ‘bigger’. Similarly, to make something appear smaller in scale to the rest of the page use -1, 75% or ‘smaller’.
The use of percentage, ‘em’ units or other ‘relative’ mechanisms to define the font size makes it easy for users to change the text size using their browser settings.
Testing
Testing should be done in the initial stages of creating a set of styles so that subsequent pages linked to the same style sheet will work:
- you need to check pages using the “Largest” and “Smallest” text size settings in the browser
- also test using a range of browser resolutions and settings to ensure the content does not become truncated or cause overlapping sections of content and text
- switch off the style sheet in the browser to ensure the content is still meaningful.
The benefit you gain from intranet standards
March 16, 2010 at 3:45 pm | Posted in benefit, best practice, governance, intranet, publishing, social media, standards, usability, user testing, value, web accessibility | 4 CommentsTags: accessibility, bt intranet, content, governance, publishing, social media, standards, usability standards, value
I was asked at the recent IntraTeam event (most excellent! 
) to explain in more detail about BT’s intranet standards for publishers. I have posted before about 5 ‘must have’ standards and about accessibility and usability.
I thought it would help to say first why I think standards are important and the benefits for everyone in BT.
Intranet publishing standards need to have compelling reasons for being used. For BT’s intranet these can include:
- Legal: web accessibility, copyright and image rights
- Regulatory: BT’s undertakings with OFCOM
- Business: content up to date and reviewed and branding
- Users: print, PDA features and global navigation bar
The main thing is, whatever the reason, is that it:
- Improves the overall user experience
- Making users more satisfied
- Increases productivity
- Saves costs and
- Benefits the business
You must also make it as easy as possible for publishers to comply with these standards. The higher you make this barrier the more difficult it will be to achieve and the more time and effort needed to do this.
So template features for content management that build in standards like owner, review date, copyright, PDA versions of the information mean publishers have no choice and find it much easier to comply.
I’ll cover our standards in more detail in the next few weeks. Please let me know which ones you want me to cover first.
More ways to make your intranet legal
March 10, 2010 at 3:15 pm | Posted in best practice, content management, governance, intranet, publishing, standards | 8 CommentsTags: accessibility, applications, governance, publishing, standards, users
When I asked a few weeks ago is your intranet breaking the law Janus Boye wanted me to cover other legal responsibilities we have. After a quick panic attack I recovered what poise I have and realised there are other areas where intranet managers, publishers and designers need to make sure their intranet is legal.
So here are key points you need to consider. I suggest you go to the Outlaw site for more details on legal information.
1. Information retention
We need to make sure we only retain the information needed by law and for the sound running of our organisation. But you need to consider whether you retain old copies of content. I know of someone who needed to show a copy of a web page as it was at the time of the incident to prove what guidance was actually being given to people.
2. Legal and regulatory frameworks
Like BT’s undertakings with Ofcom, you may need to meet regulatory requirements. This means there is often a need for some ‘knowledge firewalls’ to safeguard insider information in all sorts of industries such as the pharmaceutical, legal and banking industries. Incidentally the term ‘chinese wall’ is to be avoided according to Wikipedia.
3. Confidentiality
This isn’t just personal. It could be commercial confidentiality too. If someone creates a page about issues with a piece of software how would they be affected?
4. Freedom of information (FoI)
This can be a big concern with intranet content. Anything published on your intranet may be subject to a FoI challenge. It could makes you less likely to share some details. This is probably likely to affect public service intranets most.
5. Data protection
Data Protection, particularly Personal Data and European Union rules for its use and storage, may affect your intranet systems, particularly HR systems.
6. Copyright
Copying any content, especially an image, photo or multi-media file, from another website to insert on an intranet site is an infringement of copyright, unless you have permission from the copyright owner. To avoid any copyright problems restrict your uploading to content which you have created; colleagues, friends or relatives have created and given you permission to use; is provided by an official agency.
Is your intranet breaking the law?
February 10, 2010 at 10:42 am | Posted in application, best practice, governance, intranet, publishing, standards, usability, user testing, web accessibility | 6 CommentsTags: accessibility, applications, best practice, bt intranet, content, publishing, standards, value
My intranet could be breaking the law! Why? What? How?
Well if you have information or applications that is not accessible to everyone then you could be. Everyone, whether they have any impairment or not, need to have the same experience when using any intranet information or applications.
Legislation and codes of practice based on the WCAG web accessibility guidelines apply in most countries. US Section 508 and UK DDA 1995 being two of many examples I know of.
In BT we aim to achieve WCAG 2.0 standard. This is above the likely legal requirement for UK DDA 1995 and, more importantly, sets best practice for all users of BT’s intranet so they have a good experience whatever they use, whether they are impaired or not.
How are we doing this? Well, apart from my last post on how to use it as a lever for wider improvements, BT:
- Prevents web accessibility errors by training, clauses in contracts to buy web services, standards embedded in content templates
- Identifies and corrects web accessibility errors using an automated checker tool
- Guides users on how to use your browser, computer more accessibly.
Follow the right approach and you won’t get a nasty surprise. It only takes one discriminated user and you could have a really big problem to solve.
Prevention is much, much, cheaper and better than curing a problem like this.
Use accessibility as a lever to improve
February 3, 2010 at 2:45 pm | Posted in application, intranet, standards, usability, web accessibility | 2 CommentsTags: accessibility, applications, bt intranet, intranet applications, usability standards
I sometimes come across sites and applications on BT’s intranet which could be more usable. I find it can be easier to pick up with the owner or developer about its accessibility as a lever to improve other areas such as usability. Why you may ask?
Well there are some improvements which are a matter of opinion. What is usable to one person maybe very unusable to another. They are subjective.
But accessibility is NOT subjective. Either a site is accessible or not. Also in most countries there is a legal requirement for web services (this includes intranets) to be accessible. The level required may vary.
Accessibility standards are available to everyone on the internet. So whether a site or application is developed, published or managed inside or outside of your organisation, the information will always be there.
When a site or application’s accessibility is being updated it is a great opportunity to improve the usability and make other changes at the same time.
So ideally you can improve a site or application so it is legal and improved in other ways to give a better overall experience for all users.
Preventing accessibility problems as well as correcting existing problems is very important for your users as well as your organisation’s legal responsibilities.
I’ll post soon about what BT does on web accessibility.
Meeting mobile intranet users’ needs
January 13, 2010 at 11:05 am | Posted in application, content management, governance, intranet, oracle, publishing, standards, usability, web accessibility | 2 CommentsTags: accessibility, applications, bt intranet, content, directory, intranet applications, oracle, people finder, publishing, standards, usability, users
Last Friday I was interviewed by the Intranet Benchmarking Forum about how BT was meeting our intranet users’ needs who use a mobile device. I also came across a great blog post and an internet report on mobility (over 40mb!).
So, I thought I would share what BT has done and what I would like to do in this post as it is becoming a hotter topic.
I posted about BT Intranet mobile users in June 2009 which links to examples. I feel progress in 2010 will move in different ways for content than for applications.
Content
Now: BT’s intranet standards make sure a PDA heading is on the templates used by our content management system for publishing information. It means mobile users can click on this to see a text version of the same content. Changes made to the main version automatically update the PDA version so people can rely on the content being the same.
Future: With the increased capability of mobile devices used by people in BT I want to make sure the coding (CSS) used for the content is capable of sizing up or down for any device and enable images to also adjust their size. This means we only need one version that is usable and accessible to any device (mobile, laptop, desktop PC, etc) saving on costs and giving users a better experience.
Applications
Many of my regular readers will know my views about the poor usability of applications for intranet users and my concerns with Oracle’s applications on BT’s intranet.
For applications two versions are needed. The full, standard, functionality is available for people to use but for mobile devices only the cut down, key functionality is available.
For example with BT’s Directory I can check a person’s contact details, manager, organisation chart, whereabouts, team members and their whereabouts. For mobile devices only the contact details for the person found are available as that is the main reason why people use it.
The difficulty for me is persuading software vendors used by BT for intranet applications to understand why this is important and what is needed. It should keep me busy during 2010!
An easy way to improve web accessibility
November 18, 2009 at 3:09 pm | Posted in application, intranet, user testing, web accessibility | 3 CommentsTags: accessibility, applications, intranet applications, publishing, users
Has anyone seen the new free accessibility tool on the WAVE site? I thought you might be interested in knowing there is a simple to use and visual tool out there compared with other tools that tend to be a bit ‘techie’ in their results.
WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM. It is used to aid people in the web accessibility evaluation process. Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility of that page.
Even better from an intranet perspective, the WAVE Firefox toolbar allows you to evaluate web pages directly within your browser. Because no information is sent to the WAVE servers, the toolbar allows you to evaluate password protected, secure, or otherwise sensitive web content. The WAVE toolbar evaluates content as it is rendered within Firefox. This allows dynamically created, modified, or scripted content to be evaluated in real time.
Training publishers to understand intranet standards
July 29, 2009 at 7:59 pm | Posted in best practice, content management, governance, intranet, standards, training, Uncategorized | 10 CommentsTags: accessibility, best practice, bt intranet, content, governance, standards, training, usability standards
When I posted last week that ‘all intranet content is not the same’ I promised to post about how BT educates its intranet publishing community to have a common awareness and understanding of the importance of our publishing standards.
All publishers of formal content in BT must do the basic training courses before they can publish formal content on our intranet. Each course takes about 30 minutes to complete on-line and should be repeated every two years.
These courses cover our publishing standards such as accessibility, usability, information management, etc. You need to pass each course – just doing them isn’t enough – with an 80% pass mark.
Publishers who do not use a content management system, plus service owners and template designers, also have to do the advanced training courses. These cover how standards need to be embedded in their site design.
Content management system publishers use templates which have these features built into them before use such as global navigation bar and meet AA accessibility standards.
All publishers of formal content need to do a one-off training course for the content management system you are using (e.g. Obtree, Teamsite).
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