Web Video Standard to Revolutionize e-Learning

The first Web Standards Group Canberra meeting for 2012 was in the DEEWR conference centre. This has a very useful 300 seat theatre, with an area outside for breaks and some smaller rooms. This has a separate entrance from the DEEWR office, making access easier.

VIDEO SYNCHRONIZATION

First speaker was Christopher Giffard on problems with "video", in terms of interaction and accessibility. Assistive aids for the disability, such as closed captions, are considered excessively time consuming. He pointed out that HTML5 could be used poorly to support accessibility.

Christopher advocated the use of "timed data". This is interesting as I have been considered the issue of synchronous and asynchronous online learning. Many of the issues are the same: how do you allow for events which happen at a particular point in time, and others which do not.

There is an emerging standard for the use of <track>, which is similar to <source>. However, there have been few implementations. Track can be sued in <video> or <audio> to provide subtitles and captions. The captions are stored externally and then specifies an algorithm for synchronising this with the video or audio. Track can be manipulated with Javascript. Track works by specificity a source file for the caption content, a language and a data type (such as text/vtt) and a kind (such as "captions").

Christopher built a tool Captionator.js to support track, using the Media Text Tracks JavaScript API.

Christopher recommended WebVTT (Web Video Timed Text), a new caption specification language. This is a flat text file format based on SRT. It has lines of text starting with start and stop time codes, followed by text captions. There can be limited HTML type mark-up in the text, for bold, italics and the like. There are also "Chapters" to tag segments of video (with sub-chapters).

These features could be very useful for educational videos, for all students, not just those with accessibility requirements. Videos can be given a table of contents like a book.

In 200 I experimented with using synchronized audio with slides for education. See "Tips and Traps With Electronic Presentation Tools":

1. Text,
2. Slides (in OpenOffice format),
3. Audio Slideshow (in Real Media Slideshow).

However, this material took considerable effort to prepare and depended on proprietary formats for playback.

It would be interesting to see if this could now be automated for recordings of presentations where slides are used. In multimedia equipped classrooms, such as at ANU, it should be possible to automatically create chapters in the video labeled with the title of each slide. If the slides in turn match a set of course notes, it should be possible to link the video to the sections in the notes. This could then be used to automatically create an "enhanced" eBook, with text, slides and video all cross referenced.

It should be noted that the technology is not limited to linear video. Christopher pointed out that not only can closed captions be displayed, but they can automatically pause the video to allow time to be read.

FORMAL LANGUAGE TO SUPPORT LEARNING SYNCHRONIZATION?

The use of a formal language to synchronize text and video suggests that perhaps something similar for learning. At present an educational designer will describe what the student needs to know and have done at the beginning and end of a course, but not in detail in between. In effect there is only synchronisation at two points: the start end of the course. In contrast a computer programmer will specify precise details as to what a process has to have done which it reaches a point to exchange data with another. This would get around the problem of students not knowing what they need to do or when they need to do it.

NEW WORLD OF VIDEO A FEW MONTHS AWAY

Christopher pointed out that support for video synchronization will be available in web browsers within a few months. Mozilla are "making progress" with Firefox. IE10 will support WebVTT, TTML and the JavaScript API.

Christopher demonstrated using a video of "Minister Garrett Introduces the School Funding Review". With this the transcript introduces each speaker and allows the viewer to click on a line of the text and play the relevant clip. He also showed a media management system to keep track of how accessible videos are.

HTML5 Video, Captioning, and Timed Metadata

Christopher Giffard, from Department of Education, Employment, and Workplace Relations will speak on "HTML5 Video, Captioning, and Timed Metadata" at the Web Standards Group meeting in Canberra, 2pm 14 March 2012. This will be followed by '“Accessibility – that’s just for blind people, right?” - Dealing with different attitudes to accessibility' by Kim Chatterjee and Ruth Ellison.

Accessibility, education and web standards

The Canberra Web Standards Group was a speaker short for their meeting today at Geoscience Australia. So I prepared a quick talk on "Online Education With Web Standards, Tablets, eBooks and Smart phones". In this I suggested that web standards form a good basis for online education, with tools such as Moodle. Also I pointed out that the IMS e-learning format used by Moodle is very similar to e-book formats, allowing content to be easily converted for use on Kindles and iPads.

Roger Hudson preceded this with an excellent presentation on "Web accessibility and the elderly". He presented research results which show that most people do not know how to adjust the size of the font on a web browsers, do not know what the "accessibility" link is for and do not know what the text re-size buttons are for. He suggested we might be able to have a way the system could detect the user is having trouble with accessibility and automatically adjust the interface.

Roger mentioned that the elderly do not like smart phones, as they tend not to have keyboards with big buttons. This suggests to me a way to keep both the old and young happy with one web design: use small amounts of big text and a few bold graphics. Then tell the elderly this is big and bold for them to be able to read easily, but tell young people that this is designed for their small screen smart phones and tablet computers. ;-)

More than PDF needed for accessibility

Gian Wild talked about "PDFs and accessibility - AGIMO review" at the Web Standards Group meeting in Canberra, today. At the previous WSG Meeting, an AGIMO representative expressed the view that it was not feasible to make PDF, RTF or MS Word files accessible and so agencies should provide information as accessible web pages. This would not be a great change from the current formal AGMIO advice: "Agencies are reminded that it is still a requirement to publish an alternative to all PDF documents (preferably in HTML)." The formal release of the AGIMO PDF Accessibility Review, was due in mid-2010 (and is now four months late).

My view is that while in theory PDF could be made accessible, but in practice this is so hard to do it is not worth the trouble. It is simpler to create an accessible web page with HTML. Ideally a good quality HTML page can replace PDF.

Gian started with an introduction to web accessibility issues. She pointed out that WCAG 2 guidelines do not cover cognitive disabilities (including dyslexia, aphasia). Also colour blindness is common. Few people are completely blind (that is not being able to see any light). Many use magnifiers to make the text larger. Also "screen readers" do not cope well with Flash and JavaScript. She showed an example of text transposed to demonstrate what a person with dyslexia is faced with. She pointed out that physical disabilities have difficulties with keyboards and/or mice.

Gian pointed out that Youtube now has automated text captioning. The creator uploads a file of the text and Youtube automatically matches this to the audio.

Gian the went on to discuss the Disability Discrimination ACT and the precedent set by the SOCOG case I was an expert witness for. The Australian Human Rights Commission recommends WCAG version 1 (version 2 to follow). Federal agencies are required to comply with WCAG version 1 now with version 2 to follow. The Australian Human Rights Commission gets more complaints about PDF than any other format.

There were 40 submissions to the AGIMO PDF review. Vision Australia found tagged PDF difficult to use and lacking in support from assistive technology. AGMIO looked at best practice advice from Adobe. Assistive technology vendors advised they were reluctant to support tagged PDF as so people use it. As a result AGIMO will not define as accessible and will require an alternative format.

However, tagging is useful, as for example for text to speech. What Gian seemed to be saying was that a simple text PDF document was easier to navigate than a complicated web site with lots of menus. However, a simple web page might be even better.

Gian demonstrated to use of a text to speech system (in this case BrowseAloud.com). She pointed out that these systems can be useful for people who have a physical disability as they can place the pointer over some text to be read without having to click. One feature of the software is a dictionary. It occurs to me that some of these features and guidelines could be of value to students, particularly with those learning in a second language.

Gian suggested that AGIMO and other governments should fund an accessibility toolkit for WCAG 2, to translate the esoteric language of the guideline into something web designers can understand and use. Gian also pointed out that many simple accessibility tips (such as "use simple language") in WCAG 1 was removed from WCAG 2. These sort of useful tips could be included in a government sponsored cookbook.

One interesting option I suggest is the use of e-book formats. These could provide a useful alternative to PDF for large government reports. The EPUB e-book format is based on HTML. It should therefore be possbible to create an e-book which looks good online, prints like a conventiaonal report and could be easily also provided as an accessible web site. This would remove the need for PDF and web versions.

ps: The meeting was at the Geoscience Austrlaia building in Symonston. This is worth a visit just for the display on geology in the foyer, the library, map shop and cafe.

PDFs and accessibility of government information

Gian Wild will talk about "PDFs and accessibility - AGIMO review" at the Web Standards Group meeting in Canberra, 16 November, 2010.

At the previous WSG Meeting, an AGIMO representative expressed the view that it was not feasible to make PDF, RTF or MS Word files accessible and so agencies should provide information as accessible web pages. That statement (which I support) appears to have pre-empted the formal release of the AGIMO PDF Accessibility Review, which was due to report in mid-2010 (and is now four months late). This would not be a great change from the current formal AGMIO advice: "Agencies are reminded that it is still a requirement to publish an alternative to all PDF documents (preferably in HTML)."

My suggestion would be to make corporate reports available in EPUB e-book format and the same content as ordinary web pages. Corporate types would see "e-book" as being a trendy new thing they could read on their iPads. Most people would read the same content as ordinary web pages.

November 2010 Canberra WSG meeting

Date: Tuesday 16 November, 2010

Time: 3.00pm - 4.30pm ...

Cost: Free

Follow @wsgcanberra on twitter

Topic 1: PDFs and accessibility - AGIMO review

PDFs have always been an issue when it comes to accessibility. With the advent of WCAG2, it becomes the decision of policy-makers such as AGIMO and the Australian Human Rights Commission (formerly HREOC) as to whether PDFs are deemed an 'accessible technology' and whether they can be on a site without an accessible alternative. AGIMO is currently undertaking a review of PDFs and their capacity to be made accessible. This seminar talks about the review and its likely outcomes.

About the presenter

Gian Wild has worked in the accessibility industry since 1998 and consulted on the development of the first Level AAA accessible web site in Australia (Disability Information Victoria). She ran the accessibility consultancy PurpleTop from 2000 to 2005 and built the accessibility tool, PurpleCop. Amongst other sites, Gian has worked as the Accessibility Consultant for the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games and was responsible for training Microsoft developers in accessibility. She also wrote the original and updated version of the Victorian eGovernment Resource Centre Web Accessibility Toolkit. Gian was a Member of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Working Group from May 2000 to August 2006.

Web Standards for the Australian Government

Greetings from the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in Canberra, where the October Web Standards Group meeting was held.

This meeting is sponsored by the Defence Department and so the location is appropriate. However, the ADFA Adams Hall is not the best location for a meeting. This is a multi-purpose hall with a polished wooden floor and steeply ranked seating at the back. It looks like a US college gym and at any moment I expected a cheer leading squad to march in.

Today's speakers were:

1: Neil Philips - FOI Legislative Requirements to Publish Information On the Web
2: Raven Calais - WCAG 2.0 and the Website Accessibility National Transition Strategy
3: Gordon Grace - Making Better Use of On-line Data
4: Eileen Tannachion - Changes to the Australian Government Locator Service Metadata Standard

These are all interesting topics, but this seems like twice as many speakers as it is reasonable to fit into such a format.

The MC for the day was Tony Corcoran, Assistant Secretary, Freedom of Information and Information Management Branch, Department of Defence. He admitted that the Defence Department was not well prepared for new Government FOI legislative requirements (but it sounded like they were making rapid progress to be ready in time). Defence is doubling the capacity of their records management system from 30,000 to 60,000 users. An imaging system is being installed. Also many routine manuals which are currently on the internal intranet will be moved to the Internet to avoid the need for FOI requests.

Tony modestly said that his area of Defence was not "technical" being staffed by policy people. I have no doubt that there are suitably qualified people from information disciplines in Defence to write policy (I used to be one of them).

1: Neil Philips "FOI Legislative Requirements to Publish Information On the Web".

The new FOI procedures from 1 May 2011 are for more proactive disclosure. Public servants have protection under the legislation if they accidentally release something they should not. The legislation provides for agencies to sell documents, but hopefully most material will be provided freely online.

The main requirement is that the agency publish on its web site a list of information about the information they have (metadata) an organisation chart and other details about what the agency does. What was not clear to me was if there are standards for the format used for lists of information. It would make sense if all agencies used the same format and there was a government wide search facility provided. The Information Commissioner is expected to produce guidelines in November.

2: Raven Calais - WCAG 2.0 and the Website Accessibility National Transition Strategy

Raven started by saying the presentation would be provided afterwards, so I shouted out "in an accessible format?". She replied that there were some accessibility problems with Powerpoint and so the presentations would be offered in other formats.

Raven pointed out that accessibility is not just for a small group identified as "disabled", such as just the blind. Accessibility is an issue for much of the community at different times in their lives. Currently 20% of the Australian population identify themselves as having a disability. People with a disability have a higher unemployment rate. Accessibility is about social inclusiveness.

The Online and Communications Council of Australia agreed that all federal, state and local government web sites would be WCAG 2 complaint by November 2012.

Federal FMA agencies are required to be Level A compliant by 31 December 2012 and Level double A by 31 December 2014.

AGIMO has a National Transitional Strategy. This involves agencies first taking a stock take of what web sites they have, then checking current compliance, then assessing the publishing process and what barriers there might be. Barriers might be a lack of training in accessibility for web staff in a decentralised web publishing process.

AGIMO is developing a Community of Expertise (COE) under the AGIMO blog. This will then be updated to be a forum and have a document repository.

Raven stated that PDF, RTF and MS Word files are not accessible and so accessible HTML alternatives are required for these. I found this a refreshingly frank and practical approach. In theory it is possible to create accessible PDF, RTF and MS Word files, but as Raven says, there are not sufficient tools and techniques to support these in practice. In my view a sensible approach for agencies would be to implement accessible HTML which also displays and prints well. Agencies could then dispense with the complexity and expense of creating versions of documents in PDF, RTF and MS Word. The one HTML version would be suitable for all uses.

Raven nominated Canada as leading the way with accessibility.

Expected skill sets for roles are to be released soon. This would help me in teaching web accessibility to public servants at ANU.

I was very impressed with Raven's practical approach to accessibility.

Funnelback then provided afternoon tea.

3: Gordon Grace then talked on "Making Better Use of On-line Data".

Gordon pointed out that data web sites are not that exciting and data.gov.au (which is not online yet) will be no exception. The idea is to provide access to "raw data" which can then be combined and processed. To me this is conceptually very similar (and uses many of the same technical standards) as data repositories for research. The USA's data.gov was launched May 2009, Australia's beta data.Australia.gov.au ina October 2009, UK's data.gov.uk relaunched May 2009. AGLS, AGIFT, DCAT, Dublin Core, hCard, vCard and X500 were some standards used for gov.au.

Gordon pointed out that budget papers are now being published under a creative commons licence, but the data tables are currently GIF images and so not usable as data.

Gordon mentioned that he would not be able to in in GOVDEX online discussions of data in the future as he had left the public service and so would not have a gov.au email address. I found this curious as I have previously taken part in GOVDEX discussions as an industry expert.

Gordon showed an interesting example of XHTML with RDFa embedded. This allows data fields (such as phone numbers) to be identified in web pages. This allows both human and machine readable web pages. He pointed out these could be particularly useful for smart phones, if standards were supported. One difficulty this will cause is that "hits" on web sites may be reduced as data can be extracted from the web site once and provided via an intermediary. Gordon suggested that academics working on citation statistics might have a solution for this, but judging by the session I attended at ANU yesterday on assessing research.

Gordon suggested that providing data would be one way for agencies to easily able to meet FOI requests.

4: Eileen Tannachion - Changes to the Australian Government Locator Service Metadata Standard

Eileen started by pointing out that AGLIS is now a Australian Standard AS 5044-2010 and so is not just for government use. The updated standard supports new Dublin Core features. Thesauri are AGIFT and TAGS.

AGRkMS is a subset of SPIRIT. AGLS has considerable compatibility with AGRkMS but is not a strict subset of it.

Recent changes to AGLS include: linked data, semantic web and 2008 DC abstract model. AGLS qualifiers are "aglsterms". Some XML examples and encodings were removed. Five additional DC terms were added and included in AGLS. Two new AGLS terms were added: dateLicenced and protectiveMarking. The document type vocabulary is now common with AGRkMS. AGLS.audience has been replaced ith DC.audience. DC.Coverage.postcode will be replaced with a geo-spatial term still being worked on. Some other vocabularies have been updated. Some properties are now "recommended".

Challenges with AGLS include implementing in HTML 4.01 (I wonder about HTML 5?). Also the issue Google is starting to collect some of the metadata (will Funnleback?).

Social media advice was issued September 2010. Web Archiving Policy was will be issued the end of October 2010. The new AGLS manual will be issued as an exposure draft in November 2010. This will be useful for my new "Electronic Document Management" course at the ANU.

Ruth Ellison ended by asking for help with future WSG events: organising, speakers, venues and sponsors.

CSS 3 on the way for mobile and gaming web

John Allsopp gave an impassioned talk about CSS 3 at the March Canberra WSG meeting at the National Library of Australia. This talk, the approach John suggests and the technology it was about , could change the way the Australian Government does web pages and save lives.

This was impromptu talk due to the unavailability of the planned speaker. It had never occurred to me that anyone could be that passionate about Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), a highly complex and frustrating piece of web technology (the CSS standards are much bigger than the HTML one). CSS 3 is the newest and least supported of the CSS standards. Until this talk I had dismissed CSS 3 as something which would be good to have, but so little supported by web browsers that it was not worth looking at, and may never be supported.

John argued that new versions of browsers, particularly Firefox, Safari and Opera, had some useful CSS 3 features. The not so subtle subtext of his presentation was that web designers should give up trying to make web pages look identical on every web browser. Even if this were possible on desktop versions of browsers, it will make less and less sense as the web is accessed on hand held devices (such as the iPhone and Google Andriod smart phones) and games machines (such as the Wii). New devices will have very different size screens and user interfaces, so the desktop metaphor will not suit these.

John argued for designing web sites which will use advanced features on advanced browsers but still be compatible with old browsers. He argued that with new CSS features this can be done without lots of Javascript and CSS hacks, as used in the past.

All of that would have made an interesting academic argument, with a little more passion than usual, but hardly significant for day to day web design. However, John then went on to demonstrate some CSS features available now on newer browsers which can be used to create very elegant Apple Mac and iPhone type effects. The point he emphasised was these techniques were available now, did not require a large amount of code and were backward compatible.

What particularly struck me was how these features could be used for efficient hand held appliciaitons. CSS can be used to create elegantly shaded and curved buttons, without the use of any images. Such buttons will suit smart phones, without the need for large image downloads. Also animation techniques where the item selected changes size and colour can make maximum use of a small screen. At the same time the application will still be compatible with a desktop computer.

A few days ago I criticised the ABC for launching their "ABC Mobile" service with an interface which did not meet accessibility standards. Chris Winter, from ABC Innovation, responded to say they had fixed that problem. The ABC might like to direct their innovation at using some of these new CSS features. It should be kept in mind that the ABC provides information, not just entertainment and in particular the ABC provides emergency information during natural disasters. The techniques John was showing with CSS3 promise a way to provide visually appealing interfaces which are efficient and so would suit web pages designed for emergencies. I will be talking about this at a seminar on a "National Bushfire Warning System" in Canberra, 16 April 2009.

Web 2.0 in Government, Canberra, 27 November 2008

The November Canberra WIPA/WSG meeting is on the topic of Web 2.0 and the Australian Government:

When: Thursday, 27 November 2008 Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free
RSVP: Essential for catering

First presentation: Matthew Hodgson, SMS Management & Technology Topic 1: Government 2.0 - trends and adoption strategies

With AGIMO soon to release Web 2.0 guidelines for the Federal Government what impact will this have on the way agencies are likely to conduct their online operations? What role will government play in a Web 2.0 environment?

Matthew will look at examples from around Australia and the rest of the world in how governments are starting interact with citizens in online environments. He will draw from his recent experience with a government department in planning and scoping a web 2.0-style project to show how easy it is to move into a government 2.0 world.

Matthew Hodgson is the Regional lead for Web and Information Management at SMS Management & Technology in Canberra. He has 15 years experience in eGovernment, information architecture, information management and knowledge management, working with the government and commercial sector to deliver innovative solutions to difficult web problems. Matthew has published papers in the areas of social psychology, has lectured at the University of Canberra on social computing, and has quickly gained a reputation as one of the most engaging speakers on information architecture, social change, communication and knowledge sharing in Australia.

Matthew blogs at Matt's Musings and is a contributing author at The AppGap

Second presentation: Stephen Zafir, Stamford Interactive
Topic 2: Web 2.0 in Government - Buzzwords and Opportunities

Whilst Web 2.0 offers new possibilities in the ways that government can engage with its users, much of the thinking around this is enshrined in terms of existing brands and models.

Stephen will take a look at some of the basic components of this change and how these can be applied to the requirements and opportunities of the government space online.

Since thinking of using cards to reorganise Melbourne Airport's website in 1996, Stephen has worked at the forefront of interaction design in the UK Germany and the USA. With a focus on innovation and humanising digital experiences, major global players such as British Telecom, Yahoo and Siemens have entrusted Stephen with design leadership on a range of key products and future design initiatives.

Service Sciences and Semantics

The next Web Standards group Canberra meeting is 22 May 2008. The topics are Service Science technologies and GRDDL. You will have to come along to find out what these are, because I haven't a clue and can;'t work it out from the supplied descriptions. ;-)

First speaker: Dr Darrell Williamson, Deputy Director for the CSIRO ICT Centre
Topic 1: Service Science technologies and architectures in the ICT Centre

Darrell will be discussing the science, technologies and architectures that CSIRO ICT Centre has been developing in the area of Service Sciences. He will describe the role of Services in general, then follow it up with work that has been done in the area of Service Platforms, Semantic services, Web services and what the future holds in these areas.

Dr Darrell Williamson has undergraduate degrees in Science and Electrical Engineering, a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Newcastle and a Doctoral degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. Darrell was Head of Department of Engineering, and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology at the Australian National University, and later Director of the Telecommunications and Information Technology Research Institute at the University of Wollongong. Darrell was also Chief Executive Officer for the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) in Advanced Computational Systems, and in February 2003, he became Chief Executive Officer for the Smart Internet Technology CRC. Darrell has served on various industries advisory committees including the Information Industries Development Board of the ACT Government and the National Advisory Committee of Item3 Pty Ltd. Darrell is currently the Deputy Director for the CSIRO ICT Centre.

Second speaker: David Ratcliffe, CSIRO e-Services Integration group
Topic 2: GRDDL - an explanation and demonstration

One of the recent recommendations that has come out of the W3C is the GRDDL (Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages). David will be explaining what it is and also its application. More than that he will be walking you through a demonstration so that you can get hand's on experience with semantic technologies.

David Ratcliffe joined the e-Services Integration (eSI) group at CSIRO in 2004 as a software engineer working on data and web service composition planning for the Wedgetail (DFDMSA) and EDKMS2 projects. David was concurrently involved in upgrades to the Australian Plant Pest Database (APPD), a live information integration system, and the Boeing RFID1 project. Since 2005, David has continued work on the EDKMS projects, focusing on further developing the semantic data and web service integration capabilities of the eSI group.

Secure Web Collaboration Across Government and Industry

The March Canberra WIPA/WSG meeting, today discussed government use of web based collaboration, including for sensitive matters at Cabinet level.

Brian Stonebridge, Department Finance and Deregulation
Topic 1: GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies

Brian Stonebridge talked about how to invest in ICT facilities which did not need to be kept adding to respond to government policy. The particular example was GovDex. A five nation collaboration workspace was demonstrated. This provides support for meetings between governments. Another example was support for the Australian Government ICT Standrads Group. One hot topic this is being used for is to establish the Australian Government position on OOXML (a position has been decided, but not released). Another demonstration was for communicating to new graduate staff. GovDex is secured to IN-CONFIDENCE level of security (PROTECTED cabinet level security and video is planned for GovDex 2).

My first thought was that the tools demonstrated would appear primitive to a group of teenagers organizing their social lives: Surely the Australian Government has something more advanced? Some of the discussion seemed very quaint and last century, for example pointing out that not all graduates may be working in Canberra and the Internet could be used to contact them. In the 21st Century the assumption that staff would be in a particular city, seems an odd one. I would have thought that a 21st century organization would make no assumptions as to where in the world there staff were working from. But the use of such tools need to be learned and also the government's security and public policy issues are difficult ones which most users do not face.

AGIMO is taking a gradual approach of fitting the tools into the usual bureaucratic processes. Ultimately this approach will not work: the processes will need to be changed to improve productivity. The main value of GovDex and similar tools will ultimately come from facilitating the change in these processes.

While I have been a registered GovDex user for some time (they let government consultants in), this talk was still very useful for me. I had the impression that GovDex was just for computer projects. Brian pointed out it can be used for any government project which needs secure collaboration. An example of this is that in the morning I was asked how a wiki could be provided to support the Australian Government's Review of the National Innovation System. My immediate reaction was to say "you can't do that, bureaucrats are not allowed to use wikis" (altought I teach them how to in an ANU course). But GovDex should be ideal for this providing the needed collaboration, but within a structure which supports the needs of government policy development.

Michele Huston, National Library of Australia
Topic 2: Wikis at work

Michele Huston talked about how wikis work in practice, with people initially experimenting and then settling down to organize their information. She discussed problems with the technology, including the editor. She suggested the simple editor has advantages in encouraging people to use simple designs (and at least having to work with wiki markup).

She pointed out a wiki is not intended as an archive, publishing work flow, secure documents or for blogging. These should rightly be done with other tools, although they can be interfaced.

Web collaboration for government

The March Web Standards Group meeting in Canberra features talks on the use of web technology for online collaboration in government agencies. Recommended:

March Canberra WIPA/WSG meeting

RSVP for this event below. 28 people have registered

Date: Thursday 27 March, 2008

Event Details

Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free

First speaker: Brian Stonebridge, Department Finance and Deregulation
Topic 1: GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies

Brian Stonebridge is Director of the Collaborative Services Team in the Department of Finance and Deregulation. He has worked for a number of years to develop collaborative tools aimed at promoting a more harmonised approach to the delivery of government services. Brian is also active in the standards space and participates in a range of international standards fora. He represents Australia at the United Nations Committee for the Facilitation of Commerce and Trade.

Brian will talk about the opportunities for government agencies to use GovDex. GovDex is a resource developed to facilitate business process collaboration across policy portfolios and administrative jurisdictions. GovDex promotes effective and efficient information sharing, providing governance, tools, methods and re-usable technical components that government agencies can use to assemble and deploy information services on their different technology platforms.

Second speaker: Michele Huston, National Library of Australia
Topic 2: Wikis at work

Michele Huston is the Director of Web Publishing at the National Library of Australia. Her group undertakes web design for the main web site, authoring support for staff and develops the interfaces for complex web-based systems for the management and delivery of the Library's collections. Michele has been working with the Internet for 15 years and is particularly interested in exploring ways that the Library can benefit from popular Internet applications. In addition to the wiki project that is the topic of this presentation, she has championed a collaboration that allows Flickr users to add photos to Picture Australia and a new catalogue that includes book reviews from Amazon and allows Library card holders to leave comments.

Michele will talk about her experience implementing a wiki at the National Library of Australia. This talk may be of interest to you if you are considering incorporating a wiki at your work place to support various forms of collaborative activity. This is not a talk about the process of implementing a wiki, but is a case study on using a wiki to support the Library's extensive and varied collaboration activities. This wiki exercise did not start with a value proposition explained in business terms nor the assumption that users knew precisely what they wanted out of these tools. The wiki experience was a learning experience both for IT support and for the users. Michele is lucky enough to work at an organisation that isn't afraid of making a few (educational) mistakes!

Web collaboration for government

The March Web Standards Group meeting in Canberra features talks on the use of web technology for online collaboration in government agencies.The first talk features GovDex, a tool specifically developed for Australian Government ICT projects, and the second: the use of wikis in organizations. Recommended:

March Canberra WIPA/WSG meeting

RSVP for this event below. 28 people have registered

Date: Thursday 27 March, 2008

Event Details

Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free

First speaker: Brian Stonebridge, Department Finance and Deregulation
Topic 1: GovDex: a tool to support collaboration across government agencies

Brian Stonebridge is Director of the Collaborative Services Team in the Department of Finance and Deregulation. He has worked for a number of years to develop collaborative tools aimed at promoting a more harmonised approach to the delivery of government services. Brian is also active in the standards space and participates in a range of international standards fora. He represents Australia at the United Nations Committee for the Facilitation of Commerce and Trade.

Brian will talk about the opportunities for government agencies to use GovDex. GovDex is a resource developed to facilitate business process collaboration across policy portfolios and administrative jurisdictions. GovDex promotes effective and efficient information sharing, providing governance, tools, methods and re-usable technical components that government agencies can use to assemble and deploy information services on their different technology platforms.

Second speaker: Michele Huston, National Library of Australia
Topic 2: Wikis at work

Michele Huston is the Director of Web Publishing at the National Library of Australia. Her group undertakes web design for the main web site, authoring support for staff and develops the interfaces for complex web-based systems for the management and delivery of the Library's collections. Michele has been working with the Internet for 15 years and is particularly interested in exploring ways that the Library can benefit from popular Internet applications. In addition to the wiki project that is the topic of this presentation, she has championed a collaboration that allows Flickr users to add photos to Picture Australia and a new catalogue that includes book reviews from Amazon and allows Library card holders to leave comments.

Michele will talk about her experience implementing a wiki at the National Library of Australia. This talk may be of interest to you if you are considering incorporating a wiki at your work place to support various forms of collaborative activity. This is not a talk about the process of implementing a wiki, but is a case study on using a wiki to support the Library's extensive and varied collaboration activities. This wiki exercise did not start with a value proposition explained in business terms nor the assumption that users knew precisely what they wanted out of these tools. The wiki experience was a learning experience both for IT support and for the users. Michele is lucky enough to work at an organisation that isn't afraid of making a few (educational) mistakes!

How many webmasters does it take to change a light bulb or fix a tap handle?

The January meeting of the Web Standards Group in Canberra today featured discussion of light bulbs and the design of the tap handles in the National Library of Australia toilets.
Geoff Dibley talked about the design of search facilities for the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF). He was previously at Geoscience Australia and brought an insightfully analytical approach to the issue.

Geoff started by relating the problems of finding a specific sort of light bulb on a home shopping web site. It turned out that products for the sight had been categorized according to where they were located in a physical supermarket, which did not help the online shopper.

A little humor was injected by one audience member commenting they were from Customs, where "internal search" had a very different meaning from the web use of the term.

Paul Hagon, talked about the redesign and search analysis of Picture Australia's site. He started with a photo of the instructions above the tap handle in the toilets at the library. This is the same tap handle I photographed, commented to NLA about and used in my web design lectures at ANU, as an example of what not to do. The point of this, as Paul pointed out, the large set of instructions indicate that the interface needs to be made simpler: be it a tap handle or web search facility.

Paul had useful advice, backed up by statistics. Most users only enter one, two or three keywords for a search, they do not use advanced searches. The experts who ask for complex search facilities only make up a tiny fraction of users, make them a specialist search page, if you must. About a third of referrals come from public search engines, so make sure they can easily index your content. Items in the news suddenly become popular and you need to be able to direct readers to these. The topics may come from the international media, not just local.

One surprise was that one quarter of queries on the DAFF web site were about jobs. This is something agencies usually hide away in a sub menu, but perhaps need to make more prominent. It may also suggest that the Australian Government should take a more coordinated approach to providing job information.

ps: I asked Paul if his tap handle photo was indexed on Picture Australia. He said not yet, but may be in a few days as it is on Flicker and that is now included. But there are some tap handles already in the database.

Australian Government Web Accessibility Test

The Web Standards Group meeting this Wednesday at the National Library of Australia had a demonstration and a talk on accessibility of government web sites. Debra Wells used JAWS screen reader software on a laptop to try to find information on several web sites. complete a set of simple tasks on a number of Australian Government web sites. Ruth Ellison, from Stamford Interactive, then talked on how to motivate web workers and executives to implement accessibility.

Screen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

The first test was to find the Web Publishing Guide on AGIMO's web site<http://webpublishing.agimo.gov.au>. What the audience heard was a very fast, uninteligible synthetic voice reading through the options on the AGIMO web site. It was surprising how much text had to be read through to find the needed option. Those who want lots of text on their web site might be made to have to sit down and navigate this way.

The voice was then slowed down to a rate the audience could understand and the BOM web site was navigated <http://www.bom.gov.au>. Unfortunately the standard screen display was used so that while the audience could hear the voice they could not easily follow where it was reading from on the screen. The BOM annual report was found on the BOM home page, but after reading out a lot of "vertical bar"s.

The same process was then carried out on the Environment Department web site. On this site there were many "bullet link"s read out, but the annual report was found. An audience member suggested that a quicker way to find the annual report was with a search. This was tried, but department's search function listed so many old annual reports for parts of the agency, that the latest report for the whole agency was not found.

The Australian Council for the Arts web site was then tried. This has a Flash animated graphic at the top of the page which is labeled with unhelpful numeric codes such as "1", "2", "3". When this was skipped, there were other objects on the page causing navigation problems. This was the poorest page tried in the demonstration and one which needs attention to bring it up to an acceptable standard.

The annual report of the Health and Aging and Archive Office web pages were then checked at high reading high speed. Each took 45 seconds. By now the audience had got used to the synthetic voice and were able to follow where it was up to, if not understand many of the words.
Debora pointed out that many users would not have the latest reading software, which was being demonstrated, due to the cost. Older versions may not be able to read PDF.

An online survey was then filled in on the Australia government home page. This worked reasonably well, but it was evident how tedious repeated text in a web site can be.

A kids flash page about Parliament house was then tried. The sound of a lawn mower included with an animation then drowned out Jaws voice, making navigation difficult. There was an option to turn off sound which the sighted audience could read, but this was not found using the voice system, making the web content unusable.

Implementing accessibility in Government

Ruth Ellison, from Stamford International, talked about how to get across the importance of accessibility to web designers, project managers and senior decision makers. For those who simply say: "tell them to use the accessibility guidelines", this was a valuable lesson in the realities of motivation.

Ruith gave examples of where accessibility is not just about a group of identified individuals, for example "situational disability", of trying to use a device on a crowded tram. Some impairments are temporary, others permanent and some develop over time. She argued for a holistic approach and not just something tacked onto then end of the web design process.

Ruith suggested ROIs with reduced compensation claims, maintenance and litigation. This might be more effective than appealing to the better nature of a CFO. ;-) She also suggested looking at accessibility when buying off the shelf and tendering for development. She showed images of ZoomText keyboards, Braille displays and alternate mice.

See also books and products:

• Books on Accessible Web Design
• ZoomText Large Print Keyboard
• braille devices

Accessibility of government web sitesScreen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

The Web Standards Group will have a meeting on accessibility of government web sites in Canberra 21 November, 2007. Recommended:

Event Details

Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free

First speaker: Debra Wells
Topic 1: Screen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

Debra Wells is vision impaired and has ten years experience using JAWS screen reader software. Debra will try to complete a set of simple tasks on a number of Australian Government web sites.

Come and hear how your web site sounds to a person using screen reader software.

Second speaker: Ruth Ellison, Stamford Interactive
Topic 2: Implementing accessibility in Government

Ruth Ellison is a Canberra-based consultant with Stamford Interactive. Ruth has been working with the web for about eight years with a strong focus on user experience and interaction design. She is very passionate about accessibility and positive user experiences. Ruth has been working in the Australian Government for a number of years in accessibility and user centred design roles.

Accessibility is often one of the last things to be considered when developing an online system. This can happen for many reasons, including general misconceptions about accessibility. Ruth will look at some things to be aware of when implementing accessibility in an Australian Government context, from organisational level issues to people and technology challenges.

Our sponsor

The November Canberra WSG meeting is proudly sponsored by OPC IT.

OPC IT is a local IT company established in 1985. They offer complete end-to-end IT solutions, from procurement services, network design, and support, and specialise in standards-based web site design and development.

More about OPC IT

From: November meeting (Canberra), WSG, 2007

Accessibility of government web sites

The Web Standards Group will have a meeting on accessibility of government web sites in Canberra, 21 November, 2007:

Event Details

Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia, Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT 2600
Cost: Free

First speaker: Debra Wells
Topic 1: Screen reader testing of Australian Government web sites

Debra Wells is vision impaired and has ten years experience using JAWS screen reader software. Debra will try to complete a set of simple tasks on a number of Australian Government web sites.

Come and hear how your web site sounds to a person using screen reader software.

Second speaker: Ruth Ellison, Stamford Interactive
Topic 2: Implementing accessibility in Government

Ruth Ellison is a Canberra-based consultant with Stamford Interactive. Ruth has been working with the web for about eight years with a strong focus on user experience and interaction design. She is very passionate about accessibility and positive user experiences. Ruth has been working in the Australian Government for a number of years in accessibility and user centred design roles.

Accessibility is often one of the last things to be considered when developing an online system. This can happen for many reasons, including general misconceptions about accessibility. Ruth will look at some things to be aware of when implementing accessibility in an Australian Government context, from organisational level issues to people and technology challenges.

Our sponsor

The November Canberra WSG meeting is proudly sponsored by OPC IT.

OPC IT is a local IT company established in 1985. They offer complete end-to-end IT solutions, from procurement services, network design, and support, and specialise in standards-based web site design and development.

More about OPC IT

From: November meeting (Canberra), WSG, 2007

Information architecture

Greetings from the Eleventh Canberra WSG meeting which just finished here at the National Library of Australia in Canberra.

Donna Maurer, from Maadmob Interaction Design talked on Information architecture - Beyond the hierarchy.

She said how strict and polyhierarchies are common for government web site designs, but there are alternatives, such as metadata-driven database, faceted classifications (sorted by attributes of entities), organic structures and tagging. Wikipedia is an example of a hypertext structure (which really is not a structure at all). She pointed out that organisation web pages need not be structured by the structure of the organisation, but by the subject area the organisation deals with.

What occurred to me that perhaps Information Architects could have a future as management consultants. They could first design the web site to match what the customer needs and then restructure the organisation to match. An advantage of this is that management consultants get paid a lot more than web designers. ;-)

Andrew Boyd, SMS Management & Technology, on prototyping as part of the web design process:

This was a detailed examination of something mentioned in a previous presentation. He described prototypes and their benefits. He demonstrated a web interface prototype tool AXURE. To me this looked like any of a number of user interface design tools and I wonder if it may be better if the designer used whatever the developers were using. However, as pointed out, the prototype tool can simulate complex AJAX applications. Another buzzword used was "wire framing". The example he showed was of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme schedule on a PDA. This would be a good use for a prototype tool as it would need a difference interface to the average web page.

One worry I have is that much of what web designers are doing is reinventing software development techniques, by trial and error. It would be of advantage if they studied the tools and techniques for software engineering which have been developed over several decades. Also software developers could learn about being more responsive to client needs from web designers.

Web microformats and accessible PDF

The 31 May Web Services Group meeting would be worth attending just for John Allsopp on Microformats, or Brian Hardy on PDF. John talked at a previous WSG meeting, the slides, podcast and photos are available. Brian I were speakers at a university accessibility forum at the AVCC a few weeks ago.

Recommended:

Ninth Canberra WSG meeting
When: Thursday 31 May
Time: 2.30 pm - 4.50 pm
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia ...
Cost: Free
RSVP: Become a WSG member and RSVP at http://webstandardsgroup.org/meetings/index.cfm?event_id=94

First speaker: John Allsopp, Westciv
Topic 1: Microformats
John is a founder of Westciv, head developer of Style Master, an organiser of Web Directions (North and South) and author of a book about Microformats.

Second speaker: Brian Hardy, Vision Australia
Topic 2: Accessibility of PDF files
Brian established Vision Australia's web accessibility consultancy service and has been working on access to information issues for more than eight years. He has provided strategic consultancy services on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) accessibility for governments and major corporations throughout Australia and internationally. His particular interest is in how accessible design can enhance ICT products and services for all users. ...

Web Standards Group meeting on the user exepreince

The 28 March 2007 meeting of the WSG was the first at the National Library of Australia, rather than the usual Bunker Theater in Canberra. This was the least successful WSG meeting I have attended, but still worthwhile.

DESIGNERS AND DEVELOPERS - LEARNING TO GET ALONG:
Shane Morris, User Experience Evangelist, Microsoft:

The talk did not start well, with a noisy joke video from Microsoft. This probably goes down well at Microsoft staff meetings, but was inappropriate for showing to potential customers.

Mr. Morris tried to define the distinction between designers and developers. He did not make it clear, but seemed to be talking about web or user interface "designers" versus ICT "developers". Mr. Morris' view of designers versus developers seems to be based on the obsolete idea that "designers" come from a arts/humanities background and learn nothing about IT and "developers" are scientist/engineers learning only IT with no design. Software Engineers are now trained to have user interface designers within their teams. Graphic and user interface designers now learn IT (at least at the ANU). About half the students I teach web design and eCommerce to are arts/humanities people and half engineering/computer science.

Mr. Morris said that Microsoft were developing a "User Experience Maturity Model", analogous to the "Capability Maturity Model" for software engineering. This sounded interesting, but he did not explain further. There are details on his blog. From reading his blog, Shane has some deep insights and considerable experience at user interface design. Unfortunately little of this came across in his talk.

Another problem was factually incorrect statements. As an example Mr. Morris claimed that Microsoft started in business making compilers. But according to the Wikipeida, Microsoft was "Originally founded to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800 ..." . The average member of the public may not know the difference between a compiler and an interpreter, but someone from Microsoft should.

A third problem were gratuitous comments denigrating Microsoft. Mr. Morris claimed Microsoft had not acknowledged design as a part of development until recently and until recently the only tool Microsoft had for design was MS Paint. These seemed ill considered comments, even if they were true (which I doubt). Perhaps people with "Evangelist" in their job title have to make exaggerated and inaccurate claims to galvanize an audience. But Microsoft might want to limit its evangelists to giving internal corporate presentations and keep them away from potential customers.

One point of Mr. Morris' talk I found useful was the last one, which was the lack of usability stands for rich Internet applications. Unfortunately he didn't expand on this. Had he given a presentation on that, it may have been useful.

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN REQUIREMENTS AND DESIGN
Craig Errey, Managing Director and psychologist, PTG Global:

Mr. Errey argued that a rigorous process was needed for a defensible user interface design. You may not agree with his engineering approach to design, but at least he gave a clear and useful vision of how to do it (unlike the previous speaker). Craig is taking on a large task to teach software engineering techniques to web designers. But at least he is applying known, well established software and user interface development techniques (some of which I recognise from my training 20 years ago).

USER PERSPECTIVE NEEDED

This was the least successful of the WSG meetings I have attended. This one was still equal to the average presentation I attend, but not to the excellent standard of previous meetings. It perhaps strayed too far from the topic of web standards. The previous format has tended to be to have one "user" presentation, usually from a government agency, and one "company" presentation. Having two vendor talks was one too many. Mr. Morris seemed to be trying to give a user presentation; but a straight sales demonstration of Microsoft's new web tool would have been more useful. Craig's overview of his product was good, but I would have liked to hear from a user of the tool.

HOW MANY WEB DESIGNERS DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A GOVERNMENT?

One issue which might be addressed by a future meeting is how many web designers are needed by the Australian Government: perhaps less than a dozen. It used to be that graphic designer was needed to design a logo for each government agency. Most agencies are now required to use the one Commonwealth logo, recognizing they are all part of the one organisation. Perhaps it is time all agencies were required to use the same integrated web design. This would make it easier for the users and lessen the number of designers needed.

Previous WSG Meetings:

• May 2006, Wireless Web System for an Avian Influenza Pandemic, by Tom Worthington
• January 2007, Australian Government Web Design, Acccessibility and Market Share