We all know accessibility is important, but precisely how does one make a website or intranet more accessible? There is a great deal of hype on this topic and a lot of discussion too, yet vagueness and confusion persist. Web teams face a considerable amount of political pressure to 'be compliant', but often don't know where to start. This can result in aggravation, misdirection of effort and ultimately a failure to make the website any more accessible. Often what is needed is a pragmatic view based on real experience, to reveal what is really important and what should be tackled

We have a real problem with CMS workflow... I've been doing a lot of work recently with organisations to help them select a CMS. When sitting down with them to develop business reuqirements, I end up having the same conversation again and again regarding workflow. It goes something like this: Client: We have a real issue with the quality of the content on the site, and there's no accountability or audit trail for what is being published. We want to use the new content management system to more tightly manage publishing, and to keep track of reviews and sign-offs. Workflow

One of the hot topics of recent years has been 'web accessibility.' And for good reason. The industry is finally accepting responsibility for providing access to information for anyone using a website, or indeed an intranet. Despite this trend, a great deal of confusion and misunderstanding continues to surround the subject, and this may be stopping many from taking the necessary action. This paper is not a step by step guide to making an accessible website, but rather a quick overview to point readers in the right direction. It's not just for the disabled Accessibility is all about people. An

The goal of many intranets is to deliver high quality, up-to-date, accurate and useful information to staff. In practice, however, this can be challenging to achieve. Much is expected of intranet authors, and they are vital to delivering an intranet that is useful (and used). Yet, in many cases, intranet authoring is treated as a hobby within organisations. This briefing looks at the role of intranet authors, and challenges organisations to either take intranet authoring seriously, or to let go of unrealistic expectations regarding content quality and timeliness. Is intranet authoring a hobby? There are a number of clear signs

While intranets often have someone appointed as the intranet 'manager', do they spend their time actually managing the site, or publishing pages? Observing many organisations and intranets, one of the critical success factors is to have an intranet manager who is free to focus solely on the management of the site. The intranet manager should not be writing HTML or publishing pages. Establishing an intranet team An intranet 'team' of one is not enough, unless the organisation (or intranet) is very small. In the earlier article Roles needed in an intranet team, a very wide range of skills and responsibilities

Thanks to Google, intranet users expect to be able to type in a word (or two) and find the page they are looking for, preferably in the first few results. This is not an unreasonable expectation. At the most fundamental level, search on an intranet is supposed to make it quick and easy for staff to find things, thereby saving them time and improving their productivity. This can be distilled down to a very simple concept: search should work like magic. As much as is possible, search should always give staff the information they need, somewhere in the first few

Enterprise portals (generally known as just 'portals') rose to prominence several years ago. Complementing or replacing earlier technologies, portals promise to deliver a more coherent information management platform, and a more seamless user experience for staff. Now that the early hype has died down, it is not surprising to find that portals are not a 'silver bullet' solution to all the information delivery challenges within organisations. Like all technologies, portals have their strengths and weaknesses. These need to be well understood if they are to be successfully implemented within businesses. This article outlines the characteristics (good and bad) of enterprise

The need for improvements in information management systems and practices within organisations is great. Spend half a day talking with a random selection of staff, and the list of desirable fixes and enhancements will be lengthy. Whether it is the need to log into three different applications to complete a single task, or the filling out of a poorly-designed paper form where an electronic one would work better. Staff are struggling to do their jobs, and we are not providing them with good tools or systems to help in their day-to-day tasks. So my question is: why are we wasting

When planning an information management strategy, there can be an overwhelming volume of documents and other content to address. Within even a single business unit of a typical organisation, thousands of documents are created in a given year. While it would be desirable to have all of these managed to the same high level, this is clearly impractical. In practice, however, there are certain types of documents that need to be managed more tightly, while others can be ignored (at least in the short term). This briefing identifies some key categories of documents that should be targeted as part of

One of the key goals of knowledge management is to ensure that staff have the information they need, at the time they need it. What has often been overlooked is that effective search can play a key role in meeting this need, beyond just allowing staff to 'find stuff'. Implementing a good search solution can help knowledge managers build their understanding of staff needs, can raise the visibility of key information, and can help staff to better understand what they are looking for. These uses will be explored in this briefing, with the overall goal of prompting knowledge (and information)