Providing accessible digital solutions for our users at the University of Bristol
I created a new internal guide on multilingual content, showing when and how to use the HTML lang attribute.
Every webpage has a main language set in its HTML code, and this is defined in the head of the page. But, if somewhere on the page the content switches to a different language, and the code doesn’t reflect that change, screen readers can misinterpret it. This oversight can lead to a WCAG compliance failure, and more importantly, it can disorient and confuse our audience.
In this blog I’ll explore the subject of optimising imagery for the website. The Content Design team holds the information that the web editor community needs to perform its tasks, and it’s important to know the best ways of presenting it.
Continue reading: Dream a schema: making content mistake-proof
FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) remain a popular feature on many websites, not least on the University’s own site where a quick search for ‘FAQ’ brings up dozens of results.
On the surface, FAQs make sense: let’s gather together all the most popular things that people ask/look for, and put them all in the same place, so that users can browse through and hopefully find the answer to their question! There are however a few downsides to this approach:
Continue reading: Why we don’t do FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)
Recently, we received a support request to include the logo for a new Athena Swan bronze awardee. Attached to the ticket was an image file of the logo, which I’ve seen before, uploaded to many areas of the media library. I decided to take a closer look at all relevant school pages…
Continue reading: Standardising content assets for sustainable use
‘Just in case’ content is created or duplicated online, ‘just in case’ users might need it. Alex Saint, from the Current Students content team at the University, explains why sometimes less is more.
The ultimate goal for University webpages is that users can quickly and easily find the information they are looking for.
Yet one of the biggest challenges the Current Students content team faces is unnecessary and duplicate content – a historical issue at the University. Here’s why we might suggest removing content from your pages.
How we combined data and knowledge to make a category page work better for users.
A category page (sometimes called ‘section homepage’ or just ‘homepage’ here at the University) fulfils many functions on a website. It showcases the service, is usually the most visited page, and is the one page above all others that senior staff want a say in shaping.
The real purpose of this page is often lost in the ‘make it look dynamic!’ hype. As all good content designers know, websites exist to give our users what they need, and the number one place to do this is the service category page. And yet at the University we often find category pages are plagued with issues such as:
Continue reading: Easy improvements for users of the Students’ Health Service
A-level results day is one of the most important days in the University calendar, and that applies to us in the digital team. One of the most important tasks for us is ensuring that any A-level students who enter clearing have all the information they need from our website to make a decision about whether (or not) they’d like to join us.
Continue reading: Optimising the user experience of our Clearing pages
Senior digital product manager John Bourne looks at some of the problems in how we showcase our courses to prospective students.
At Bristol we spend a lot of time and effort gathering and publishing information about our courses. Most of this is done centrally through our online prospectus, but this information also appears in a variety of other places.
Duplicated content across our site causes maintenance problems for staff. More importantly it means prospective students don’t really know where to find the most useful information to meet their needs.