Another week bites the dust, and we’ve accomplished a lot. With team sickness and others on annual leave, we were a couple people short but we managed to keep the boat afloat (we hope!)

Sharing weeknote learnings with CDPS

On Wednesday, Heledd, Sam and Sophie met with the CDPS Communicating Digital Community of Practice to share some key learnings from our year of writing weeknotes.

We had a great session presenting and sharing our experience with weeknotes, before opening the floor to viewers for a question and answer.

Sam reflected back on the learnings from a session Giles Turnbull last year - which really kick started us to write weeknotes as a team. Lots of interesting questions and insights were shared and we hope we inspired others to start writing weeknotes, even if you’re not comfortable sharing them widely, the knowledge you put out there can help others in similar fields learn and grow.

You can read more about Giles - go on!

More practical tips for teams looking to start writing weeknotes…

Making updates to your section of the Intranet or website

Around this time each year, we receive a flurry of requests for updates to existing content that has simply become dated since it was originally published. Here’s some top tips from our team to help you keep your section accurate and informative:

  • Review and refine - share the URLs to each webpage amongst your team, and ask each person to flag any information that is currently or soon to be out-of-date.
  • Add documents as DMS links (Intranet) - this allows you to update the content yourself without needing to contact us.
  • Always check your external links. Are they still relevant? Do they still go to the intended page / content?

Can a PDF be accessible?

In short, yes! However there’s lots to consider. From typeface to the inclusion of images, there’s various steps you’ll need to take to ensure the content you create is accessible to all the users.

With a bit of work, most PDFs can be brought in line with accessibility laws, but there are other ways to present web content, which can depend on the user journey, digital inclusion, and system setup.

HTML allows for more flexibility but requires the copy to be clear and concise, with user journeys placed at the heart of the content. In some cases, an accessible PDF download can be used in conjunction with a HTML webpage.

Examples of accessible PDFs on the WG website:

The key thing is conduct user research to better understand the needs and digital literacy of users, to appropriately gauge their requirements. HTML forms may be better in some circumstances, but accessible PDFs can be a solution to many publishing tasks.

The best way to approach a project is to consider whether a specific output is even necessary? Do your users require an accessible PDF, or is this just the way you’ve always communicated with them in the past?

Exploring new options to present data allows for your content to be used by a greater number of individuals.

For example, if your content contains regular updates, perhaps an accessible newsletter using a system like Microsoft’s Sway, which is interactive, can be made accessible and can be embedded on a webpage.

While Sway, like many programmes, isn’t immediately accessible without turning on the accessibility view and creating the embed code, to allow it to interact on the webpage. It has quite a lot of in-built accessibility.

When you turn on Accessibility view in Sway, you can:

  • allow Assistive Technology to access all of the content and provide jump locations (for example, a jump to the next heading).
  • change the colour scheme to black and white to provide high contrast text.
  • switch the navigation to vertical scrolling which makes things easier to navigate, and shows users one piece of content at a time, making things easier to understand.
  • break up specialised groups like grids, slide shows, stacks etc. to provide easier access to the content.
  • alter interactive elements to feature focus indicators, allowing keyboard-only users to know what has the focus
  • remove excessive animations to reduce unnecessary distractions and to aid Assistive Technology.

New application form for flood risk activity permits

Laura and Lucinda were really pleased to publish a new application form for flood risk activity permits. We were approached last year with a few problems users were having and a request for some changes. The online application form was ‘lifted and shifted’ from a word doc in 2020, but we’ve learnt so much since then - about Smart Survey and how we can make forms better for users.

It all started as a ‘small job’ but the more Laura and Lucinda worked on it, the more they wanted to apply all the things they’d learnt over the last few years to make it even better. They:

  • designed a new apply page with all the information a user needs to prepare before they apply
  • designed a charges page so people could see how much a permit would cost
  • removed lots of unnecessary questions
  • simplified the content and designed one question per page
  • used hidden questions so users didn’t have to make decisions about which team the application was sent to

They’ve also been working on an online calculator that tells users how much their permit costs. This is still in the works but we’re hoping to go live with a BETA version once the team have finalised a few potential fee changes.

It’s early days so they’re keeping an eye on how users are finding it with a short feedback form.

This was a team effort as always. Massive shout out to Sam for the support she gave along the way, providing advice and helping to make sure the design was consistent with the improvements Sam was making to various waste forms. And to Kim who tested the form before it went live – making sure all the routes worked, there weren’t any rogue capital letters lying around and just making sure it made sense.

Other bits we’ve been working on…

  • Some content is sent to us with accessibility faults already corrected, which helps us turn around the task quicker - This website could be a great tool for you to use: WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tools (webaim.org)
  • As part of our ongoing online forms improvement work, Andrew audited the number of forms we have created on our SmartSurvey account. He’s discovered that we have, so far, produced 291 forms (including new and older forms) which have generated 17,793 completed responses. Just think of the people hours and paperwork that would have created for NRW if all these forms were still in PDF format not to mention, the cost in paper, postage, packaging and ink used. We will continue to look at both old and newer online forms to homogenise frequently asked online questions in our application process.
  • Laura and Alex have been speaking to the education team about lots of work they’d like us to do the education, learning and skills webpages. It’s early days at the moment, trying to find out what the problems are and what we should or shouldn’t be prioritising.
  • Sam, Laura and Lucinda are still working hard on permissions. Lots of discovery work around filming on our land and preparing for various show and tell sessions that are coming up.
  • Heledd went to Strategy to Action: How digital makes a difference to everyday lives - organised by Audit Wales. It was a great opportunity to meet some new people, and catch up with contacts working in Digital - local authorities, CDPS, Cwmpas and National Parks. Many organisations are facing the same challenges, so making time for networking at these events is really important - not just for our own learning, but for shaping better Welsh public services.

Fun fact Friday!

This week’s fun fact has been provided by Owain, who reached into his bank of facts to find an actual fun fact instead of something morbid. So, he settled on…

Indian giant squirrels!

This species is endemic to India, with main sections of its distribution in the Western Ghats, Eastern Ghats and Satpura Range as far north as Madhya Pradesh.

The Indian giant squirrel is one of the largest squirrels, with a head–and–body length of 25–50 cm (10 in – 1 ft 8 in), a tail that is about the same or somewhat longer, and a weight of 1.5–2 kg (3.3–4.4 lb), although rarely up to 3 kg (6.6 lb). Average for both sexes is about 36 cm (1 ft 2 in) in head–and–body length, 45 cm (1 ft 6 in) in tail length and 1.7–1.8 kg (3.7–4.0 lb) in weight.

It has a conspicuous one-, two-, or three-toned colour scheme. The colours involved can be whitish, creamy-beige, buff, tan, rust, reddish-maroon, brown, dark seal brown, or black. The underparts and the front legs are usually cream coloured, and the head can be brown or beige, and there is a distinctive white spot between the ears.