It’s the end of another busy week in all things digital at Natural Resources Wales, but the sun has been shining and our team has been hard at work to keep everything running smoothly. Also, Google tells us that today (July 19) is National Daiquiri Day so it’s time to treat ourselves!

Passionfruit Daiquiri cocktail on a beach

Diving into tables with Content Design Cymru…

Earlier this week, Dylunio Cynnwys Cymru / Content Design Cymru held a lunch and learn session about the purpose of tables and how we can guide people creating content to appropriately use them, and in an accessible way.

Lucinda and Sophie attended the session and found it really useful, reinforcing a lot of the learnings we have realised through our first hand experiences dealing with inaccessible tables in evidence reports and on web content across the organisation. We always encourage people creating tables to consider whether the inclusion of a table is strictly necessary, as the user experience for those with disabilities or who might be accessing the content through a screen reader can be so fraught with difficulty.

Tables should only be used to present data (numerical) only. Some of the essential guidance for building accessible tables includes a descriptive title, with easy to acquire information and a neat and consistent layout.

Purpose of tables is for presenting data only, and good tables have the following characteristics

Something we often see forgotten is clear headers, as many tables that come into our team are too complex and trying to do too much. When a table tries to capture too many variables, the message becomes lost for all users, not just those accessing your content with assistive technology.

So before building a table into your content, consider whether it’s needed - what are you trying to communicate with your data? Could this be clearer by presenting it as a bullet point list? Don’t forget that for a table to be considered accessible, it cannot contain empty or merged cells/rows, and content cannot cut between pages. If you have too much to fit on the page, there’s a good chance this content could be better presented to clearly communicate your message.

For additional information, please familiarise yourself with the Government’s guidance for publishing accessible documents and understanding accessibility requirements for public sector bodies.

Image of orchids in a field

Exploring user research learnings…

This week, our User Researcher James Lewis shared some of his learnings from his time at NRW. We track user sentiment from a variety of touch-points. These include Hotjar, which capture how users interact with our website through recordings, heatmaps, surveys and feedback. James also interviews users to get a better, more in-depth understanding of the challenges they experience with NRW services.

James has begun sharing these insights with Digital Content Officer Sophie. This will help Sophie to design learning and development materials to help our SMEs create content that better meets the needs of our users. Their first meeting on Tuesday went well, so stay tuned for exciting new learning materials - coming soon to a portal near you!

e-Learning graphic with a head filled with cogs on a laptop

Other things we’ve been working on this week:

  • It’s reporting time! This week, we’ve been busy publishing the latest data onto the website, as well as the usual day-to-day requests that come into our team. Sophie and Kim have been plugging away at all your requests, but please have patience with us in the meantime!
  • Our team continues to test the new laptops and report any issues with accessing our CMS back to ICT to help iron out any teething issues with the new technology as it’s rolled out across the organisation.
  • Sam and Toyah were joined by members of the Marine Regs and Marine Licensing teams for a workshop exploring the types of marine tasks that people might want to carry out.
  • Toyah has finalised the new web page content for the marine licensing area of the site.
  • Heledd, Sam, Phil and James met with the Permit Reform Group to plan a kick-off meeting with Iwan Hughes and Carys Roberts from the Species Team.
  • It’s one of our Digital Content Officers, Kim’s birthday today! Happy Birthday Kim!