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Accessibility: call for help

Submitted by mac on 1 February, 2006 - 00:22.
This Website

One of the recommendations that young people did during the symposium (the event where 120 young people contributed to design the core of the campaign) has been to have the website accessible.

In a few words, this means that  the website should be usable also by people having visual or physical impairments. This has been one of the reasons for which we chose to adopt drupal as the platform for developing the portal (more info on the accessibility of drupal can be found here).

Although we do of our best to keep the website accessible, we would very much appreciate advise, suggestions, or a simple feedback on the website as it is from those of you who having experience (as webmasters or as users) in this area.

Accessibility is for us a major quality standard in the final version of the website!

Thank you a lot!

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web accessibility guidelines

Submitted by lau on 27 February, 2006 - 18:16.

Hello all,

Following to Mac's call for help on accessibility of the campaign website, below you can find a link to a website containing information on how to make a website accessible: http://www.w3.org/WAI/.

I hope this can be useful to everybody.

Laura Alcoverro

Council of Europe relations co-ordinator, European Youth Forum

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one question

Submitted by SNJ Luxembourg on 12 February, 2006 - 12:42.

Hello Mac, hello all,

Wow a lot to read through at this place. I will try to keep up later during this day or tomorrow. and maybe comment on a few topics.

But before doing so, could you tell me how to find my way through all this jungle of messages. I have to admit that I don't clearly understand where to post what, respectively the logic of why some already existing messages have been posted where they are. It doesn't all seem clear to me.......

Thanks for your help.....

greetings from Luxembourg.

(on this lovely Sunday I will now switch off my PC, take my daughter and leave my office and join my family for a nice meal............)

Service National de la Jeunesse, Luxembourg

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The Difference

Submitted by mac on 10 February, 2006 - 15:27.

Indeed this is one of the things on my ToDo list: I think that the Symposium people (as a whole) can make (as they already did) the difference! :)

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accessibility: ask participants of symposium for help?

Submitted by jose on 9 February, 2006 - 10:38.

On the accessibility; that is indeed a difficult matter, and will be even more so when you will start having graphics on the final public website. Would it be a suggestion to contact the participants with physical impairments who attended the Symposium? They might be willing to help in this matter, and where strongly involved in the process back then. They probably still are in their respective countries.

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Will public website be based on this website?

Submitted by jose on 9 February, 2006 - 10:20.

Mac, you may not believe it, but after all my questions at the NCC meeting  I am still a bit confused about this and the other website :D

There's the division between this website, and the official campaign website that is still to be developed.
The website we are on now, the online  "intranet" for NCC's, the Sekretariat, the Youth Forum and so on, will be changed here and there, but in fact is almost fully operational and useful. The applications are focused on exchange of information; forum discussions, books, documents and so on.

Now, the public website for the campaign, which people from all over Europe are going to see, will be developed soon (with or without using the Luxembourgian templates). But do I understand correctly that that public website will have a fully new structure for the technical functionalities as well as a different layout? Or will it be a graphical revision of the structure of this existing "intranet" website?

I'm sorry to keep asking about all this :)

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Attempt of explanation

Submitted by mac on 10 February, 2006 - 16:05.

I think this question is still in the mind of many (regardless to their participation to the NCC meeting), proof that a better explanation is needed. I try here below, but any suggestion for improvement is welcome!

Let's distinguish two levels: logical and technical.

Logical level:

  • The Preparation Website (PW) is a website addressed to campaigners who need information and networking about the preparation of the campaign. We needed this portal very quickly, as most of the contries already began to work out their plans. People who comes here don't look for fancy pictures and colorful animations, but for information.
  • The Campaign Website (CW) will be a website with a double purpose: keeping on the work and the goals of PW but - above all - being a tool for awarness-raising in the target groups of the campaign. It should be as well a tool were people can easily find information on the upcoming events, etc, etc... For the CoE the launch of the campaing will be at the end of June, so - in our plan - this site is not as urgent as the PW.

On a logical level, thus, the PW is included in the CW.

Technical level:
On the technical level things are more flexible. What we already know for sure is that we want to use in the CW the same technological platform (drupal) of the PW because it fully  responds to the quality criteria expressed by young people during the symposium (free software, accessible, ...). Additionally, by then we will have quite some experience (both internally to the secretariat and among users) on how to use it, and this will make the passage smoother.

What we still don't know:

  • if we will be using the same domain name or not (there are pros and cons in both the solutions)
  • if we will set up an empty CW or if we will build its content upon the PW
  • in case the PW will be the base for the CW, if we will add all the features at once or if we will gradually implement them in order to arrive at the launch date with everything up and running
  • etc...

Given the fact that several NCC will open their campaign earlier than the CoE (March or April), my personal opinion is that we should begin to implement improvements on the PW as soon as they will be available, given that it is unrealistic to have the CW ready by those months. However, it's just my personal opinion, and we will have to take a decision together with the company we will outsource the CW to, also considering NCCs opinions and preferences.

Next week we're going to put online the specifications we will include in the call for tenders: any kind of feedback/suggestion/improve will be highly appreciated.

Last but not least: both the PW and the CW are fully open (none of them is to be regarded as "internal"). This choice is due to the strong will and committment by the secretariat to keep the processes behind the campaign as transparent and open as possible.

I hope this answer your question in a comprehensible way but - given that you are surely not the only one to have doubts about this - I will sincerely appreciate any kind of feedback that will improve my explanation.

Peace and Love!
Mac.

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