ISBE Website Feedback
WONDERFUL! What a great improvement! Overall, super impressive. Here are a few suggestions for improvements:
1. ADA compliance
You may need to get an ADA website compliance expert to review the site. I am providing just three examples of possible ada non-compliance issues (I'm not an expert), but there may be many more. Here is a technical assistance document from ada.gov that is a great checklist:
https://www.ada.gov/pcatoolkit/chap5toolkit.htm.
a. Alt text needed on images
b. Daunting task for this site, but pdf’s are supposed to be posted in an alternate format. This is from the ada.gov toolkit:
“State and local governments will often post documents on their websites using Portable Document Format (PDF). But PDF documents, or those in other image based formats, are often not accessible to blind people who use screen readers and people with low vision who use text enlargement programs or different color and font settings to read computer displays.
Solution: Post Documents in a Text-Based Format
Always provide documents in an alternative text-based format, such as HTML or RTF (Rich Text Format), in addition to PDF. Text-based formats are the most compatible with assistive technologies.”
c. Video guidance from ada.gov:
"Solution: Include Audio Descriptions and Captions
Videos need to incorporate features that make them accessible to everyone. Provide audio descriptions of images (including changes in setting, gestures, and other details) to make videos accessible to people who are blind or have low vision. Provide text captions synchronized with the video images to make videos and audio tracks accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing."
2. Search Feature
a. I LOVE the filters!
b. I LOVE the pop-up view of the link!
c. I LOVE the posted date in the pop up window. It may be helpful to add current year to the date. I can see older results include the year, which leads me to assume anything without a year is current year. It might be nice just to list full dates – month, day, year – for all results.
d. Old stuff still comes up first. When I search on “Technology”, a lot of old stuff rises to the top. The link to the current Educational Technology page is on the second page of the search results, behind stuff from 2012. Is there a way to ensure the most current information comes up first? Same thing for “ADA” search where 2006 documents come up first, followed by 2010, followed by 2014. Same with a search on “Erate”. It seems to be an across-the-board issue and one that created a lot of frustration with the old search site.
3. Contact
a. Could the contact page include the ISBE address and phone number?
b. On the Contact page, the ISBE logo in the upper left hand corner takes me back to the old website.
4. ROE’s - The listing of ROEs and ROE Supts is buried under “Resources and Links”, while the ISCs have their own section with links to each one within that section. I would suggest either creating another nav bar on the page that says “Regional Offices of Education” and then move the link to the Directory under that, OR move the Directory link to the top of the page after the first paragraph.
5. Could Innovation and Ideas be added to the Teachers list of resources? It only shows up on the home page.
Thank you for what clearly took a lot of hard work!
Lori Whitman
LTC2