Weeknotes, 11 Sept
Updates Design CMS Accessibility
A week of progress across a number of fronts…
Design
Ian has been hard at work on the global design elements, including navigation design for the W3C site. Nicki has helped with an initial technical review and she plans to start prototyping global elements in the browser (HTML/CSS) next week to help test accessibility and usability.
CMS selection
Marie has done a stellar job continuing CMS platform investigations. Work this week has included liaising with the CMS platform companies, updating our CMS demos, and discussions with the WAI team on how they can help test CMS accessibility.
We have shortlisted two CMS platforms at present. While we’re confident we can build an accessible front-end for the new W3C site it’s important the CMS authoring tool itself is also accessible, so users with accessibility needs can reliably edit content. As previously reported, finding a CMS that meets these accessibility requirements has been very challenging, and one we expect to have to make some compromises to meet.
However, we are glad to report both CMS suppliers we’re reviewing have engaged positively with authoring tool accessibility needs and have made progress in this area.
We have a meeting with the W3C Systems Team this afternoon to go through everything we’ve learnt so far to see whether we’re in a position to make a decision. We’ll report back on this soon.
Sitemap technical work
I worked on reviewing our recommended sitemap and added a lot of essential technical details to help our work. This includes what template each page will use, whether content will be managed in the new CMS, how we plan to deliver the front-end, and the proposed new URL for each page.
This sparked off a lot of questions we need to discuss both with the Studio 24 team and W3C next week so we can firm up all these details.
Final thoughts
The CMS selection process has been a major challenge, primarily due to authoring tool accessibility needs. We’ll likely need to make compromises in this area, but we’re looking forward to a decision being made so we can move on to build!
It’s brilliant to start seeing design take shape and we look forward to start getting this into the browser. For now, the weekend beckons! Stay safe everyone :)