Web Content Quality and Integrity Standards

Accessibility

  • This is the most essential quality standard for an inclusive-minded University. It’s also the law.
  • Common offenders: missing alt tags on images and inaccessible documents
    • Plone makes it easy to add alt tags to web page images (use the description field in image edit)
    • Accessible documents are a bit harder. Generally, try to avoid using images and tables in documents. If you can’t avoid it, ask for help to have your document made accessible.

Content accuracy

  • Periodically review site content for accuracy and validity
  • Delete or archive old content to cut down on clutter
  • Make sure to unpublish pages you no longer want indexed by searches
  • If the content becomes outdated but is still relevant, edit the page to reference the past tense
  • Common offenders:
    • Upcoming event page that has been abandoned after the event passed
    • pages meant to be removed but are still published and showing up in search results

Fix broken links

  • Click through your entire site at least once a year for link integrity check
  • Common offender: external website links are more prone to being broken - check these fairly frequently

Site navigation

  • Keep the navigation uncluttered
  • The site organization should focus on an external audience
  • Make sure your sub-navigation is working properly
  • Common offenders:
    • top horizontal navigation getting duplicated on the left
    • image and file names showing up in navigation
    • A few simple settings can fix these problems – if you see it, ask the web coordinator to help fix it!

Mobile responsiveness

  • Over 50% of people looking at websites use a mobile device. If a website isn’t mobile-friendly, it could be losing visitors 
  • This is primarily a usability issue but also effects our image, making us seem out-dated and irrelevant
  • Our Plone web templates are optimized for mobile devices but the body content needs to be developed with this in mind too.
  • Look at your site on a phone - is anything hard to read or navigate? If so, fix it or ask for help!
  • Common offender: tables often get squeezed or cut off at mobile resolutions and become useless. Ask for help how to rebuild the tables to be mobile-friendly.