Chapter and Verse Blog

by Penny Everett, VerseOne Accessibility Specialist

The Equality Act 2010 makes it quite clear that any service provider must by law make sure the service is accessible (which includes web products). Although the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are not law, they have been put in place to help organisations to comply with the law and make their web products accessible.

So I thought it would be a good idea to start looking at some of the success criteria that the Guidelines have set for organisations to follow. We'll start with the very first one—set at Level A compliance—which comes under "Perceivable" (one of the four main guidelines):

Text alternatives—SC 1.1.1: Non-text content
This covers informative/decorative images, controls, media, CAPTCHAs, and sensory experience.

For example...

When it comes to decorative images, web service providers should ensure that any item that is purely decorative (such as non-informative images, formatting, or invisible elements) can be ignored by assistive technology.

In the case of decorative images, they should either be "called" from the CSS, or the HTML alternative text attribute should be set to "null", e.g. (no space between the quotes). I mention this in more detail because so many people either ignore the alternative text, which means the blind user hears the file name, or they put a space between the quotes, which means the blind user knows there is an image there, but doesn't know what it is.

A good content management system, like VerseOne CMS, will make sure a content author gives an image alternative text. But it can't actually help them to make sure the wording is adequate, or determine whether or not an image is decorative. That part is down to the human; provided they have had sufficient training.

To sum up, we need to bear in mind at all times that the aim is to give the impaired user as near an equal experience as possible to that of other users.

February saw another successful social media discussion forum at VerseOne's Digital Strategy seminar in Manchester. Many of the NHS delegates who attended are keen to build further on the ideas raised in NHS Bradford & Airedale's presentation. Accordingly, with our social media workshops fast approaching in March, we thought we'd speak to our social media experts to pick their brains on an area of concern that is frequently raised by NHS Trusts at our events: dealing with complaints.

If you'd like to receive more public-sector-specific advice from our social media experts, you can meet them at one of VerseOne's upcoming social media marketing workshops. Details of the sessions are at the bottom of the page.

React Fast

As social media channels are real-time communications tools, every second counts. The longer a negative comment goes unanswered, frustrations will grow—or, worse still, negative momentum could build quickly, with others within the social community turning against your Trust. 

When it comes to NHS communications, it is often difficult to send a satisfactory response quickly. Before putting any communication out, there are often procedures to follow requiring approvals and sign-offs (this will often mean the involvement of senior management, which can slow things further).

Despite this, it is crucial to let the aggrieved person know that you have heard them. If a full response is not immediately possible, providing acknowledgment of the issue is. Make clear that the matter is being looked into and that it has your organisation's full attention.

Ideally, you should formalise your capability to put out an "interim response" via a protocol that has senior management buy-in so that you can always react quickly.

Human Touch

Although it is important to react quickly to any negativity towards your Trust or organisation, nothing is more frustrating to an aggrieved person than receiving a stock pre-prepared response.

Although there may be a temptation to put out such a generic "interim response", it is important that the patient or member of the public feels that their issue is being taken seriously.

Any response must display sensitivity, empathy and, above all, communicate in a friendly and conversational tone. It is easy for the gloves to come off when a complaint is made against a faceless organisation online as many people percieve the internet as an anonymous forum.

However, social media can provide your organisation with a face and by responding with a human touch you will help take the sting out of most people's frustrations.

Where appropriate, try also to provide a point of contact for discussion to continue offline, as this is a great way to diffuse the potential of an online storm of negativity.

Seeing is believing

It is important to realise that these negative conversations will be happening online whether you are part of them or not. However, a great response can convert an aggreived or upset patient into an advocate for your Trust or the NHS as a whole.

You cannot respond to what you don't see. One of the keys to managing your online reputation is to have an effective monitoring program, so that you are aware of what's being said about you and where it is being said.

Tools such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite will allow you to pick up any mentions of your organisation on Facebook or Twitter—or you can use Google Alerts, an effective way to track mentions of your organisation across blogs and the wider webspace.

The great thing about social media is that you can listen without being seen, so even setting up dormant accounts for a period will allow you to spot wider trends and react strategically before actively engaging through social channels.

Introduction to Social Media

This session will explain how to setup and start using the main social media channels, how to determine which channels are right for your organisation. The session will also provide best practice information on utilising each channel to its full potential, as well as taking a look at some case studies with some good and bad examples of social media use in the uk public sector.

• Manchester, 27th March
• London, 24th April

Advanced Social Media

This session will delve deeper by looking at how each attendee is currently running and maintaining their own social media channels, followed by recommendations and paths of action to optimise current social media activity on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and by blogging all in the public sector context—and how best to fit these activities within a wider online communications strategy.

• Manchester, 28th March
• London, 25th April

Complete this form to receive more information and an outline for the courses

by Penny Everett, VerseOne Accessibility Specialist

Did you know that if the source document isn't accessible then the PDF document won't be either?

Organisations are often compelled by law to publish documentation to their target audiences. Many of these documents are very long and were originally prepared in Microsoft Word. Content authors given this task often simply convert the original file to PDF, upload it to the server, and link to it from a web page. Job done!

But not so fast... This is good practice only as long as the resulting PDF is accessible and can be read by assistive technology. Impaired users, such as the blind who use screen-reading software, must also be able to access these documents.

This means that not only must content authors ensure that the content on their website is accessible, but that the linked PDF documents are too.

The process for making a PDF accessible is known as "tagging" and is very similar to the coding process for a web page. Just as the headings, tables, forms, and links on a web page require semantic coding, so do the same elements in a PDF.

This is made much easier if the originating document has been made accessible in the first place. For instance, the 2010 version of Microsoft Word has a built-in accessibility checker.

So organisations who are still using Word 2003/2007 would do well to heed this fact. They should ensure that content authors who are converting Word documents to PDF have access to this latest version of Word, be it on a spare laptop or a single dedicated PC. They can then run the accessibility checker on any source document prior to converting it to a PDF.

Then, provided they use software such as Adobe Acrobat Pro's PDF Maker to convert to PDF, they will be going a long way towards meeting the WCAG 2.0 Guidelines.