[Chapter-delegates] Fwd: Our New Site Has Launched

Mon Dec 19 09:09:35 PST 2011

Lia,

thanks for your kind answer. Let me answer explicitly an implicit
question in your mail: why the hell didn't you come-up with this
earlier? I can offer a few answers:

 - because I'm lazy by nature and have a talent to speak-up late
 - because I hate to judge on a thing in general without being
   asked specifically (or being in an advisory group or so) as
   long as the creators doesn't say its finished
 - I deem it rather stupid, annoying and some times insulting to
   interfere with people in charge of a task by asking silly
   questions of type "did you think of this, did you decide on
   that". This costs their time and questions their skills.
   No professional likes this. I think in turn professionals
   have to live with comments once they say "I'm done".

A bit more inline:

Lia Kiessling wrote on 2011-12-19 09:49:
> Hi Klaus - this is wonderful feedback and we're very thankful you took the time to send such great input!   It's fantastic that the web is an ever evolving medium so much of this feedback can be easily implement by the new year. 
> 
> It's great that in the design process we had so much input from our Chapters during our special preview sessions for Chapters and will continue to do so. 
> 
> Here are some answers to your questions below.
> 
>> From: Klaus Birkenbihl <Klaus.Birkenbihl at Isoc.de>
>> Date: December 18, 2011 3:01:48 PM GMT+01:00
>> To: chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org, webfeedback at isoc.org
>> Subject: Re: [Chapter-delegates] Our New Site Has Launched
>>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I took a second glance and sorry to say this: it is not only
>> "a few items that need to be addressed" but severe issues that
>> should have be addressed before release. These are mainly in
>> three areas:
>>
>> 1. As lined out below, the new site breaks the Web. Bad if it
>> is the "Internet Society" who does it. You are not alone in
>> space! There are people who learn about ISOC by subscribing to
>> http://www.isoc.org/headlines/rss.php . They even didn't get a
>> notice that there is a new release of the Website cause it was
>> not disseminated on this feed. Neither
>> you can read it in places where the feed is sydicated like
>> http://www.isoc.de/ or to mention a company site
>> http://www.ict-media.de/. People may use feed burners that in
>> turn use it as input. Same holds for documents: people
>> have bookmarked things. Any concept how to fix it? Redirect
>> for all old document URIs as soon as the document is moved?
>> For what its worth - this is how the Web works and its sad
>> that it is ISOC that didn't take care.
>> Even worse (as said below) http://www.internetsociety.org/rss
>> says "Find our more about RSS feeds and how you can use them
>> to keep up-to-date on Internet Society activities (LINK)"
>> But there is nothing to find.
>> By the way: the homepage contains a line
>> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml"
>> title="Internet Society RSS"
>> href="http://www.internetsociety.org/rss.xml" />
>> but http://www.internetsociety.org/rss.xml cannot be accessed.
>>
> 
> That's unfortunate you missed the stories about the launch and you're correct - it wasn't on our RSS feed and we'll keep this in mind from now on.  
> 
> Here's where it was broadcast:
> 
> - Our newsletter
> - Facebook
> - Twitter
> - Homepage
> - Paper.il 
> - Scoop.it
> - Press releases  
> - Workshops
> - 3 Chapter previews in this calendar year (six in total to account for respective time zones).
> - Staff previews

I don't think I missed all of it. But I admit it didn't give me an
alert for action.

On the other hand I bet you discussed the domain/URI issue
internally and IMHO obviously took a wrong decision.
Frankly, I wonder if its so easy to fix and I wonder if you read the
article of Tim Berners-Lee on cool URIs that should not change. You
applied kind of a surgery to the Web by cutting out an important
part (www.isoc.org) and replacing it by another one
(www.internetsociety.org). Now all other parts of the Web that
were connected to (www.isoc.org) have find their way to the
new adress. Takes time, effort that's not yours, some will get
lost, but over time it will be surely mended.
> 
> In terms of the RSS feed on the website page, it should be working now. Please let us know if something isn't working for you and send us a screen shot.  Again, thanks to the flexibility for the web these are typically easy-fixes.

yes RSS is working and findable now. Though the page still says
"Find *our* more about ...".

>> 2. Accessibility. "The Internet is for Everyone". Is the Web
>> part of it? Let's agree on "yes". Two important instruments
>> to make the Internet for everyone are accessibility and
>> internationalization. While full internationalization can
>> be tricky and is hardly to achieve (though there are some good
>> instruments in place) accessibility is relatively easy. There
>> are well accepted standards around that provide requirements
>> and criteria. The most famous are from section 508 or more
>> specific the WCAC 1 or WCAC 2 from W3C. ISOC does great in
>> teaching the world on accessibility. Events like INET Sri Lanka
>> earlier this year address the topic. Many Governments and public
>> institutions all over the world are legally obliged to conform
>> to at least to a certain level of accessibility (as of today
>> mostly base on WCAG 1). So what about ISOC itself? Would it be
>> fair to ask what level of accessibility you aim for? Please
>> let me know.
>>
> 
> We 100% agree with you and are very passionate about creating a FULLY accessible website!
> 
> There are two parts to this:
> 
> 1) We will continue to make improvements to the current site to continue to meet W3C standards - and eventually exceed them.  
> 
> 2) We're looking at a number of options to make the site  is not only design accessible via the highest W3C standards - but also accessible content - an area that's often overlooked by the majority of organizations.  Unfortunately (and you will know this) - most people's understanding of accessibility relates exclusively to visually impaired users - to the point, in fact, where these two terms are often used interchangeably.
>  
> Here are some way’s we’ve worked to increase our accessibility exponentially in the transition from the old site to the new site:
>  
> o   Our website behaves as consistently as possible and has a consistent appearance/look-and-feel (e.g. all links and buttons should look and behave in the same way)
> o   We avoid using words in their non-literal sense (e.g. “it's raining cats and dogs”)
> o   We avoid using abstractions (e.g. provide a link to a telephone number rather than to ‘Contact us’)
> o   We provide clearly signposted, simplified summaries of pages' content at the top of the page
> o   We are working to provide an audio version of the site's content
> o   We break information into small, simple chunks and illustrate them visually wherever possible
> o   Always provide an obvious way for users to get back to simpler content if they find themselves on a page above their reading level
> o   We increased the spacing between lines of text
> o   Increase the spacing between paragraphs

Good things to do. But - as also Gunela outlined in hear mail - there
are standards out there for good reason and with an amazing quality.
These standards define levels of accessibility and success and failure
criteria to be met in order to conform to a certain level. So if
e.g. you go for level AA of WCAG 2.0 you go through the list
and apply it to your work. My expectation was that there was some
decision on a level because ISOC is promoting good accessibility. But
I think implicitly you are saying you did not. But as said - its
some effort but once you set a goal it can be achieved. Level AA
might be a good one to aim for btw.

> As we go down the road of further improvements, we'd love it if you could sit on an advisor panel for more of these changes - please let us know your availability and we'll schedule a call.

Of course we can have a call on it. Lets fix a date next year.

>> 3. Internationalization. Go to the home page. Click on
>> "繁體中文" (traditional Chinese). Surprise: shows you the home
>> page in simplified Chinese. Click on "become a member"
>> brings you back to English, hm. But in the main menu
>> you get an offer for "繁體中文" (traditional Chinese). Click.
>> the address bar now changes to http://46.43.36.213/zh-hant/...
>> what!? Content is "加入互联网社区" (meaning "how to join" in
>> simplified Chinese). The page hold two underlined texts:
>> "了解更多" (more) and "现在加入" (join now). Would you assume a
>> link? Everybody would. Click it. Nothing happens. Inspect
>> the element (look at the source). It says: "<u>了解更多</u>"
>> hu? Nice trap (export control?). Click on "home". Shows
>> the home page in simplified Chinese. URI is
>> http://46.43.36.213/zh-hant.  Click on "English". Home page
>> in English. Address bar shows you the URI: http://46.43.36.213/.
>> Littlish things only? But quite a few. And there is more about
>> internationalization. But other than for accessibility there
>> are rather not many standards or levels that can be applied
>> directly. But HTML provides some help and the community
>> provides best practices. It might be a good idea to make
>> good use of it.

> We are currently working on the multilingual pages so hopefully the URL issues will be fixed shortly (thank goodness for the flexibility of the web!)
> 
> We had the Chinese section translated by professional translators and proof read by native speakers.  If you have alternate suggestions for native-tongue vocabulary please let us know!  This would be welcomed input.

I'm sorry. Wrt the traditional Chinese vs. simplified Chinese
thing I was not clear. I don't say the Chinese is wrong. I
assume I only pointed to a misunderstanding. The difference
between traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese is mainly
on the character set used. Traditional Chinese is mainly used
in Hongkong and Taiwan while simplified Chinese is used in
mainland China. The misunderstanding is that your menu
advertises traditional and your content is written in simplified
Chinese. This said I have only limited expertise on this and
don't only speak a little Chinese. But I'm sure I'm write and
you might wanna check it with your experts.

>> I assume "Internet Society" should be committed to Website
>> quality beyond a wow-generating layout. A few more topics
>> than the ones above should have be addressed in this context:
>> e.g what about semantics or meta-data? The events calendar for
>> example doesn't hold any. Would increase the re-usability and
>> value significantly. Not much meta on the home page. (Search
>> engines will cry!)

> We are always committed to not making search engines cry :)  We'll be running our site through various optimization tests on a regular basis and make all changes.  Feedback like this is so valuable so thank you!

Wrt semantics in HTML there are several standards around. HTML5
uses Microdata, a relatively simple one based on Microformats.
W3C also promotes RDFa. RDFa is more flexible and Web-like while
Microdata is part of HTML5 as it is today. Though I personally
like RDFa much better for today Microdata would probably the right
thing to use because it is more popular. (If in the end RDFa makes
there is a way to mechanically translate it).

Cheers, Klaus

-- 
Klaus Birkenbihl
Internet Society German Chapter e.V. (ISOC.DE)
http://www.isoc.de/
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