In the last few days of October we were alerted to a bot attack on a form on one of 杏吧原创’s hundreds of websites. Because the email account to which the form submissions were sent is not monitored, the attack went unreported for a longer period of time. In just a few days a form was submitted over 19,000 times.

Eek!

We shut the form down (it was no longer in use) and no harm was done apart from 19,000 form entries to be deleted from the database, but this is a good time to remind ourselves about why forms are subject to these attacks and how to stop them.

Why me?

Bots are let loose on a relatively frequent basis against forms on 杏吧原创’s websites. The forms they attack may seem random, but the point of these attacks is that they do not care if your form is popular or obscure. The aim of bots is to seek out fundamental flaws in a web server and exploit those vulnerabilities. John Conde, an admin at Stack Exchange’s Webmasters forum summarizes it thus:

They search for and fill in every form they can find. They’re looking for any vulnerability that they can exploit for their gain. It might be to see if they can gain access to your site or web server. It can be to compromise your form to send out spam.

It’s worth their time to do because it’s all automated. They just set their bots free and let them go about their business. Their cost is low and the potential reward is high.

(You can on the Stack Exchange forum.)

Of course, 杏吧原创 has measures in place to stop such attacks but you can add to this security with a few straightforward steps.

Stand by to repel bots!

Thankfully there are steps to take which can automatically do away with most bot attacks against your forms. Let’s take a look at how to employ these.

1. Add a reCAPTCHA field (see below) – Web Services offers a reCAPTCHA field element for all forms on sites in the 杏吧原创 template. This field – we have all seen them – enables a non-robotic user to confirm their humanity with a tick. If there is some question as to whether you are a human or not you might be asked to prove this by demonstrating you know what a traffic light or a bicycle is. We’ll ignore the fact that it’s a computer making you prove you are not a computer. For details on how to implement this fix, see below.
2. Turn off your forms if they are not in use. Although many forms are in continual use, many are seasonal or one use. For example, you may have a form which you embed in an event in order to allow users to register. You might want to use the form again next year. However, once registration is over for this year then you can go into the forms and switch if off. (See below.)
3. Ensure the admin notifications for the administrator are set to go to a real email address. If you don’t then the form can accrue tens of thousands of submissions before anyone notices. Plus any genuine submissions are missed, even if your form is not attacked by bots. To check how to add the email address, please see below.

Adding reCAPTCHA

The main way to forestall the attack of the bots is to employ a reCAPTCHA field. To add this there are a couple of steps to carry out.

1. Check your website has this feature enabled. reCAPTCHA is enabled by a license key so we switch it on as requested (partly because when we first purchased this tool we had 600 websites already). To check this, go to a form in the back end of your website and see if you can add the field. This can be seen by looking in the Advanced Fields area:

If it doesn’t appear then proceed to step 2. Otherwise, you can go to step 3.

2. If it is not there please submit a request to the ITS Service desk

3. Once it is enabled you can then add a reCAPTCHA field. Go into Forms > followed by clicking on the name of your form, click on Advanced Fields and then CAPTCHA (as in the image above).

Once you have updated the page you can see on the form that your users will need to check the box before they submit the form.

Switching off forms

When a form is not in use, you can switch it off, making it invisible to people visiting the page where it is hosted. To do so:

1. In the back end of your website, click on the聽Forms link on the left hand side.
2. You will see a list of forms, each of which has a switch button next to its name.
3. Click on the switch to turn the form off.

Once off, the form will no longer on the page.

Direct your form submissions to their rightful home

It’s important to make sure your admin notifications go to the correct email address. If you do not set the address, all submissions will go to the Web Services junk mail folder. If your form receives 20,000 bot-generated submissions, no one will know. Even if it doesn’t, all genuine submissions will be lost to the ether.

To make sure the submissions go to the correct email address:

1. Hover over the form name in the back end of your site and click on聽Notifications.
2. Click on聽Admin.
3. In the To: field, paste in your or your admin’s email address. Save the notification.

—

Now you have some methods to protect your forms from bot attack.

We will leave you with the exciting news that in cuTheme 2.0, all sites will have CAPTCHA switched on by default. Additionally, we will have some templated forms for your general needs, and all of these will have CAPTCHA switched on by default. Watch this space!

The post Defence is the best form of defence: Protecting forms on your website appeared first on Web Services.

Around this time three years ago, most of us were packing up our office belongings and heading off to work from home for two weeks. (Oh how na茂ve we were!) At the same time, 杏吧原创 had to cancel all in-person events. This meant refunding 1500 people for those cancelled events which the university had taken payment for via CU Ecommerce.

Receiving a refund in that situation was automatic. It wasn’t our customers’ fault that we had to cancel those events. It didn’t matter that 杏吧原创 lost money – refunding the customers’ money was imperative, especially in the uncertain times of Spring 2020.

Cancellation Culture

Now as events on campus are going back to pre-COVID levels, it is good to remember that every event which charges for attendance, or every paid service or product sold via CU Ecommerce must have a refund policy, stipulating the conditions that enable a refund to be claimed, the time frames involved, the amount individuals can expect when requesting a refund and whether there are special situations (e.g., a provincial health mandate) that alter the policy.

What is the advantage of having a clear and prominent refund policy? According to UPS, customers pay very close attention to such policies with “64% reviewing the returns policy before they make a purchase online”. In other words, a lot of people will not make a purchase if they don’t think it is reversible.

We work closely with the Payment Card industry (PCI) to help our customers feel secure in their purchases. One action card users can take if they are unhappy is ask the payment card issuer to refund their money. (This is called a charge back.) If the card issuer decides the customer has a good case they will claw the money back from 杏吧原创 to give to the customer. This is expensive for us and if we are in this position too many times banks could stop allowing us to process their cards. Worst of all, it is bad public relations!

What does a typical refund policy look like?

We have a great example of what a refund policy can look like for events staged on campus. The Department of University Advancement boasts a nicely crafted policy, which you can . Why is this a good example?

• The page is entitled聽Refund Policy – rather than something like聽Cancellation Policy.
• A cancellation policy includes info about what you as an event host/service provider will do if you cancel an event and under such circumstances what your refund actions will be.
• Bear in mind you cannot imagine all the scenarios that might lead to cancellation. E.g., If you were planning an event to take place in April 2020, you would probably not have covered what happens the eventuality of a global pandemic breaking out.聽Cancellation also has a bit more of a negative ring to it
• The text lays out some different situations and scenarios and makes it clear what happens in each of these.
• It establishes timeframes for when a refund can take place and how long it might take to be processed.

It is important to cover all your bases and protect your event or service (for example, from failing to break even). At the same time, you must balance with this the maintenance of a good relationship with the community with which you are doing business.

With that in mind, you should aim for fairness and clarity while also putting the onus on the customer to seek out a refund from you.

What should go into a refund policy?

Your refund policy should include:

• general situations in which you will issue a refund
• if and how this may vary over time leading up to an event
• whether a refund will be full or partial
• what are the timelines involved in

You should list the circumstances under which a refund will be given (or not given). For example, it may be that a student who pays for a field trip via CU Ecommerce must withdraw from the course in order to qualify for a refund. It may be tied to serious illness or bereavement, but remember you would have to have a way to check for this. If you make providing evidence a stipulation, then things could get very weird, very fast.

The cheque’s in the mail

However, most refunds depend on time as the main criterion. Here you have a big range of options. You might insist no refunds will be given to those requesting them within the five days leading up to an event. You can also decide to make the refund policy more lenient the more notice is given. For example, you could have a policy that states there will be a 100% refund if it is requested up to 30 days before an event, with a 50% refund if it is requested within 30 days of the event. Alternatively, you can say there will be a refund but with a 10% administrative fee.

You can make the same kinds of refund promise, but not linked to any time framework – for example, cancel at any time and receive a 75% refund.

Note: When we say The cheque is in the mail we don’t mean literally. We only refund via the card used to pay in the first place. According the banks this is just good customer service – it is what the customer expects and is theoretically not giving them extra work to do (for example, going to the bank to pay in a cheque).

Friend or Foe

It is around this kind of decision that you have to strike a balance. You must be fair to your event and its stakeholders, but also fair to the customer. They may have a very legitimate reason to withdraw from an event. Another way to look at it is your event’s solvency versus the need to maintain good PR for your department and the University as a whole.

In terms of timelines, ITS Finance generally executes people with refunds within five days of receipt of the request. Once that step is taken we can confirm a refund will be coming their way. However, after this point the question of how long a refund takes is out of the hands of anyone at 杏吧原创 – it is down to the payment card issuer. It can take 30 days to appear on someone’s credit card account.

If you don’t have a refund policy at home, shop-bought is fine

To make things easier we have prepared a choice of policies you can adapt to your own use. If you would like to employ any of these, you can copy the text, edit it to match your event, and paste this into a request to the ITS Service Desk. In the request simply ask that it be used as the refund policy page on your ecommerce site. Don’t forget to include the URL of your ecommerce site.

If you have any questions or simply want to add a mandatory refund policy please .

The post Putting the ‘fun’ back into ‘Refund and Cancellation Policies for ecommerce’ appeared first on Web Services.

Sprints are a defined amount of time to get the work done. When we first started with Agile, we tried a two-week sprint. That was too short. We have also tried a four-week sprint, that was too long. We have now settled happily on a three-week sprint (with one week of learning and development). This basically means that we plan out all the things we need to do in three-week chunks. The goal is to deliver incrementally: get feedback on small features, refine, and move onto the next small feature.

The Work

Work is defined in user stories. Ideally, they would be written as: 鈥淎s a (specific user) I need to do X so that I can X鈥�. This allows everyone on the team to fully understand the task at hand 鈥� what they are creating, why they are creating it, and what the intended outcome is. A good user story would also include acceptance criteria. These are all the requirements that would need to be met in order for the user story to be deemed complete.

Writing user stories takes a lot of time so we do not often write them out fully 鈥� though in a perfect world, we would.

An important thing to note: if a user story is too big to get done in three weeks that means it needs to be broken down into smaller, deliverable tasks.

The Roles

Usually in a fully functioning agile team there are many roles. As a smaller team we have two key roles that carry out key tasks.

• Product Owner: this is the person who knows the project the best. They map out the project in terms of tasks that need to get done and they know the business requirements. They write the user stories and acceptance criteria. This role is shared by Mary Kathryn (Manager, Web Services) and a Sr. Developer (each Sr. Developer is a lead on a project).
• Superhero: this is also known as a scrum master. This is a rotating role between the developers in that one developer will be the superhero for two weeks. What this means is that they will handle all dev service desk tickets that come in and they are not responsible for any sprint work during that time. Their focus is support. And running our daily standups.

The Meetings

Within the sprint there are four key types of meetings that we hold:

• Sprint planning meeting 鈥� We do these on the last Friday of learning and development week. This is where we plan out all the work, we will do over the three-week sprint. We usually have around 60 tasks that we go through.
• Daily stand-ups – We do these every morning from 9-9:15. We talk about what we did yesterday, what we will do today and anything that is blocking us from getting our task done.
• Demo 鈥� At this meeting folks get to show off the work they did, and we get feedback from clients.
• Retrospective 鈥� Here we talk about what went well in the sprint, what did not go well, and action items that we can bring into the next sprint. This is the key to continuous improvement.

Learning and Development Week

Our sprints are three weeks followed by one week of learning and development. This is where we take courses, do workshops, training, write documentation, and hold the demo/retrospective/planning meetings. We will talk more about this in a future post.

Want to learn more?

We recently hosted a Web Wednesday chat all about Agile, you can check out the recap here.

The post How we Structure our Work: Three Week Sprints appeared first on Web Services.

Alternative text, also known as alt text, is a short description of an image that is read by screen readers. With social media becoming an increasingly integral part of our daily lives, it’s important to consider the accessibility of our content.

There are three key reasons why you should start adding alt text to your social media posts:

• Accessibility: Adding alt text to social media posts makes them more accessible to individuals who are blind or visually impaired. Furthermore, providing context of the image ensures that everyone can understand the content you are sharing, regardless of their abilities.
• Discoverability: Alt text can help social media algorithms better understand and categorize your content. This can improve the visibility of your post in search results, which can ultimately increase its reach and drive more traffic to your account.
• Engagement: Improved accessibility means more people can enjoy your content. This will directly improve your engagement rate 鈥� that is, it may lead to an increase of comments, shares, or likes.

Now that you’re convinced of the importance of adding alt text, read on to learn how to do so on the four most popular social media platforms: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn!

Instagram

1. Tap the “+” icon to create a new post. Select the image you to post and edit it as you normally would.
2. After you’ve finished editing your image, tap on Advanced Settings at the bottom of the screen.
3. Scroll until you see the Write Alt Text option and tap on it 鈥� a text box will appear where you can write a description of your post (you can add a description to each image in a carousel post)
4. After you’ve finished writing your alt text, tap on Done to save it

Facebook

1. 颁濒颈肠办听笔丑辞迟辞/痴颈诲别辞听at the top of your Feed.
2. Select the photo you want to add.
3. Hover over the photo and click Edit.
4. The automatically generated text will be shown on the left side of your photo. 颁濒颈肠办听Override generated alt text聽to edit it.
5. Write your alt text in the box.聽
6. To save your alt text, click聽Save聽in the bottom left.

Twitter

1. Click on the Tweet compose button and attach your photo(s).
2. To insert descriptive text, click Add description (you can add a description to each image in a tweet).
3. After you’ve finished writing your alt text, click the Done button.

Linkedin

1. Click Start a post at the top of your LinkedIn timeline and select the image you would like to upload.
2. Click Alt.Text and write your descriptive text
3. After you’ve finished writing your alt text, click the Save button.

Congratulations 鈥� You just made the digital world a little bit more accessible for everyone! If you’re interested in learning more about web accessibility, check out our short self-guided workshop:

The post How to Add Alt Text to Social Media Posts appeared first on Web Services.

Believe it or not, writing content for your website is much different than for other mediums. Because there is an abundance of other sites for users to visit, you need to ensure yours captures their attention swiftly. Most engaging websites must pass the 5 Second Test. Essentially, you have around 5 mere seconds to grab the attention of your users before they abandon your site for good. A well-written site will not only capture users鈥� attentions but will help them find what they鈥檙e looking for, understand what they find, and use what they find.

This article will cover six topics on how to write for the web. We鈥檒l go over: headings, paragraphs, sentences, words, active voice, and pronouns.

Headings

Headings and subheadings are useful tools that give order to your pages. This sense of structure helps to guide visitors to the information that they鈥檙e looking for.

Headings also help to break up the text of a page. Websites with giant bodies of text are daunting and usually turn users off from your site. Headings help to give your site space, making your content much easier to read.

Additionally, they make your website scannable and highlight the key points of your pages. Visitors usually scan a site to search for their desired keywords before reading it in its entirety. Headings will help to prop up key points, allowing users to find what they鈥檙e looking for faster.

Headings are also crucial to make a web page accessible. They not only help people with learning difficulties, but they are essential for people using a screen reader to access the page. And as with all measures for accessibility, they simultaneously make the page easier to scan for all users.

How to use them:

• Accurately portray what the text below is about
• Keep them short and sweet (Less than 8 words)
• Ensure they are clear and concise (Don鈥檛 try to be clever)
• Make them big and bold (help them stand out)

Paragraphs

While you might be inclined to write as much information as possible down on your site, keep in mind that when it comes to writing for the web, less is more. Long paragraphs of text are intimidating to read and often scare visitors away.

How to use them:

Huge paragraphs make it hard for users to scan through your site. As a rule of thumb, keep your paragraphs to 50 words or less, allowing for a more digestible read.

Take a closer look inside your paragraphs to see if you can find any lists hidden inside. If you do, break up your paragraph by listing them as bullet points. Bullets are much easier for users to read and help your keywords stand out more.

Consider using standalone sentences when you want to make an important point or to guide the user elsewhere on the page.

Bold key sentences or words in a paragraph to highlight their importance. As a result, users will have an easier time scanning for what they鈥檙e looking for.

Sentences

Why is it important to keep sentences short when writing for the web?

When viewers must wade through long sentences, they often get lost in the clauses and commas, giving up before they even finish. People have very short attention spans online. In fact, statistics show that the average reader gets bored after only a few seconds.

Users often get confused when reading a long sentence. Most sentences can be reduced by a few words and still communicate the same message.

Short sentences give readers what they want by swiftly getting to the point. Most visitors want to get the info they want quickly, then leave. So why not give them what they want?

Long sentences are harder to read on screen than on print. Reading a long sentence in small print on a monitor can cause eye strain, so keep sentences short to avoid making your readers uncomfortable.

Long sentences are especially difficult for users cognitive, learning, and neurological disabilities and those with neurodiversity and neurological disorders. This may include people with ADHD or dyslexia. Making sentences shorter makes them much easier to read and understand – not just for those people, but for everyone.

How to do it:

• The average length of a sentence should be roughly 20 words
• Keep your sentences under a maximum of 40 words
• Use bulleted lists if a sentence can be broken down
• Remove any junk words or phrases like 鈥渋t seems like鈥�, 鈥減ossibly鈥�, and 鈥渁ctually鈥� that clutter up your sentences
• Try to write out long sentences first, then break them down into shorter ones by removing any unnecessary bits

Remember: Not all sentences can be made shorter. However, if you鈥檙e consistently trying to keep them more concise, it will make a huge difference!

Words

Although long and complex words are sometimes used for print writing, when it comes to writing for the web; simple is best.

How to do it:

Make sure to use common words and keep them as short as possible. Try and avoid using words with more than two syllables.

Keep your sentences simple by removing filler words/phrases like 鈥渢here is鈥�, 鈥渢here are鈥�, 鈥渋t is鈥�.

Define any acronyms to avoid excluding any confused readers. Since avoiding acronyms is impossible in web writing, simply define the acronym in the first sentence it is used by including it in parentheses. For example: Content Management System (CMS).

Active Voice

Active Voice vs Passive Voice

[one_half]

Active Voice: A verb is in the active voice when it expresses an action that the subject performs.

For example: the marketing department is reviewing the document.

[/one_half]

[one_half_last]

Passive Voice: A verb is in the passive voice when it expresses an action performed upon the subject or when the subject is the result of an action.

For example: the document is being reviewed by the marketing department

[/one_half_last]

Why use active voice?

• It makes your writing more interesting to read. It鈥檒l be livelier, more forceful, and more engaging, encouraging your visitors to keep reading.
• Active voice improves your credibility because you鈥檙e speaking directly to the reader, not at them. On the other hand, passive voice might suggest an unwillingness or inability to communicate.
• Active voice improves your writing by making it clearer and more direct. Concise writing is more likely to resonate with readers because of how simple it is to understand.
• Lastly, active voice makes your writing less awkward and clunky sounding by reducing the number of words.

How to identify passive voice

1. The verb phrase will always include a form of 鈥渂e鈥� such as 鈥渁m鈥�, 鈥渋s鈥�, 鈥渨as鈥�, 鈥渨ere鈥�, 鈥渁re鈥�, or 鈥渂een鈥�. For example: the form was returned by the student.
2. The person doing the action usually follows the verb. For example: many excellent undergraduate programs are offered by 杏吧原创.

How to create active voice sentences

• Put the subject first
• Change the verb
• Rethink the sentence

[slideme title=”Put the subject first”]

Passive: This proposed rule change was proposed by the Registrar鈥檚 office.

Active: The Registrar鈥檚 office published this proposed rule change.

[/slideme]

[slideme title=”Change the verb”]

Passive: We must consider how our resources will be used to deliver quality services.

Active: We must consider how to use our resources to deliver quality services.

[/slideme]

[slideme title=”Rethink the sentence”]

Passive: There is a considerable range of technical expertise demonstrated by today鈥檚 students.

Active: Today鈥檚 students are technical wizards.

[/slideme]

Pronouns

Pronouns like 鈥測ou鈥� and 鈥渦s鈥� help to engage readers and make them feel included. Not using personal pronouns forces you to repeat the company鈥檚 name throughout the website. This approach causes awkward sentences that are tedious to read and write. For example, the repetition of 鈥溞影稍� University鈥� can feel unnecessarily formal.

How to use them:

The key to understanding pronouns is knowing who you are writing for. Think of who your audience is and then write to them as if you were directly speaking to them.

For example, throughout this article we鈥檝e been referring to you (the audience) as 鈥測ou鈥� and not 鈥渢hey鈥�. This was done with the goal in mind of speaking directly to you and engaging you with the writing.

A final note…

Now that you have some new ideas for how to write for an online audience, you can take this knowledge and apply it to your own site. We suggest you start at the homepage and work your way through one page at a time.

The post How to Write for the Web appeared first on Web Services.

Examples of captions doing what they should do

In our recent post Captivating Captions, we looked at why captioning videos is so important for accessibility and many other reasons.

Now we are going to examine some video captions (as opposed to just subtitles) to show what these actually do.

One of the most important roles a caption can play is to fill in context provided by non-verbal sounds in conveying the plot of a film or television program.

Note: each image also has a description underneath it so that users employing screen readers can understand the point of each example. In this situation, every image has the attribute alt=”” because the description is in the image caption instead. Usually though the alt text and the caption provide different functions.

Let’s take a look at the first picture:

Without knowing anything about the story, we can guess that the fact that (as related by the caption) a tire has popped and kids are screaming is probably a significant moment. If captions were not available to a person with deafness/severe hearing loss, then they might not understand why it appears that the children are suddenly screaming. You cannot see either the tire or the children, but the captions let us know what is happening.

The description of music can provide context for a movie or TV show. It can establish the mood of a scene:

Or captions can help to convey a plot point

Or to underline the emotion of a character:

Or even ironic counterpoint:

There are many times also that the mood and plot are conveyed by no sound at all. Those moments are hard to process in some stories when there is no visual cue.

How not to do it

It鈥檚 tempting to begin this section with a sentence like, And now for the fun part! But although the following are amusing/bemusing/surreal, it鈥檚 important to remember they are also real, and if you rely on closed captioning to let you know what is going on they might be confusing or annoying.

Some are just… weird:

Others are confusing:

Some captions take a creepy scene – and make it much, much worse

How do they know?

Anyone who has worn a bowtie will know this is the only way to fix one.

And now back to this nightmare

And what does this even mean?

Many of these captions leave me feeling like this:

Clearly, there is a way to write captions that are meaningful and many ways which can be confusing or just plain strange. Despite their entertainment value, it’s important to make captions plain, simple, and descriptive.

The post Captivating Captions: Examples of Captioning and its Uses appeared first on Web Services.

Video captioning is a crucial aid to a lot of people, especially those with particular disabilities. We produced a news story earlier this year to tell you how to add captions to all your videos. However, we think it is also important to understand what captions are and why we use them.

Captions or subtitles?

It鈥檚 important before we begin to define what we are discussing. Some people use terms such as captions, closed captions and subtitles interchangeably, but they have different meanings.

Subtitles are pieces of text that relay spoken word 鈥� dialogue, narration, commentary 鈥� on to the screen. However, there are many more aspects to the soundscape than spoken word.

Captions represent a larger range of the sounds appearing in a film or video.  As well as the voices on screen, captions can convey the sound of the weather, expressions of emotion (sighs, screams, whimpers of delight), the woof-woof and meow of doggies and kitties, the noise of vehicles or weapons etc.

Closed captions are captions that are optional 鈥� you can switch them on or off. This article discusses closed captions, which for the sake of brevity we are going to refer to simply as captions or captioning.

Open captions are always in view and unlike their closed cousins, cannot be switched off. The best example is when you are watching a film in which characters switch to another language 鈥� whether you want it or not, the producers of the film have added a translation to be displayed on screen.

Sound reasoning: why we use captions

The main reason we employ closed captioning is to allow people with audio disabilities to access the content 鈥� factual information, for instance, or the storyline. This is the case whether your video is one aimed at recruiting, retaining, informing or educating students at 杏吧原创, or if you are using third-party content (e.g., showing a clip of a documentary movie in class). Naturally, in educational settings, it is crucial that all information is conveyed and accessible.

But it is not only people with an acute hearing disability or who are deaf who are assisted by captioning. Viewers with ADHD also find it useful. Many individuals also have undiagnosed auditory processing disorder (APD), which makes it harder to process information you take in aurally. Captions not only help engage but can provide information that is easier to process when read, as some learners with ADHD will find it harder to process or retain what they hear.

Emotions described in the captions also help some viewers who are on the autism spectrum. While the emotions of characters or the mood of a scene don鈥檛 immediately register, seeing the emotions written out on screen (e.g., 鈥淣ervous whispering鈥�) can allow them to understand immediately what the character of the scene is.

Many disabilities operate on a spectrum of severity. There is a difference between being legally blind and needing reading glasses, but the ability to blow up text on a screen to a large font is useful to people who have forgotten their reading glasses.  In the same way, people鈥檚 hearing can decrease slowly over time and make captions necessary without it ever becoming a severe disability. There can also be a period after exposure to prolonged loud noise (the days after attending a rock concert or loud night club) when hearing is impaired to the point that ordinary video cannot be heard.

But while people with disabilities form a major portion of those who use closed captions, research shows that most people use the feature at least some of the time, and that the majority of those who do use it do not have an auditory disability.

Research in the USA () showed that in a surveyed population of university students across the country, 54% of respondents used captioning all (35%) or some of (19%) the time. In such a population (the average age of respondents was 24), the gradual hearing loss associated with an aging demographic is not present. Meanwhile, Netflix conducted a survey that found that 80% of users employ captions at some point every month. And in 2021 that while fewer than a quarter of viewers aged 56-75 used captions, a whopping 80% of viewers in the 18-24 year-old bracket switch on captions.

In the US study listed above, 90% of students with disabilities found the captions moderately to extremely helpful, which might be expected; the stunning statistic is that 87.5% of students without disabilities expressed the same opinion. Why is this the case?

Here鈥檚 a caption for you: Accessibility is for everyone

We are like a stuck record with this: accessibility helps everybody. Therefore, it makes sense that as with so many features designed to aid accessibility, closed captioning is going to help anyone who chooses to use it.

To start with, there are many environmental reasons why captions on a video make it easier to access. You can mute something on screen but continue to watch and comprehend perfectly what is going on if someone in the same room has to take a phone call, or you do not want to wake someone sleeping in the next room. The rise of captions can also be linked to COVID and enforced working and studying from home in close confines with roommates or family. Learning as well as TV consumption with closed captioning engaged suddenly became socially necessary as well as acceptable.

It is also much more suitable to use captions if watching the video on public transit. Many people can consume an additional two hours of media a day this way. In , three-quarters of Generation Z watch video content, including material for school, in public with nearly half doing so on mass transit. Anyone who can read captions can consume in silence. (Unless you take the number 10 bus from 杏吧原创, where someone is always watching 鈥淭he Masked Singer鈥� unmuted and full blast.)

Hearing or reading the information is one thing, focus is another factor when consuming onscreen content. There is a much higher ability to concentrate on video with captions, allowing viewers to take in more of the material. And even more crucially, the rates of comprehension and retention of the material is much higher.

Often people find it hard to decipher what is being said. This could be because of a narrator鈥檚 accent that is foreign to them, or because faculty may not speak clearly due to a disability or out of habit. It is much easier therefore if what is said is also written out.

Additionally, if you are studying English subject matter, but this is not your first language, you can be thrown by homonyms (in fact, even if it is your first language. ). Closed captioning lets you know if someone just said their, there, or 迟丑别测鈥檙别. In general, listening with the written words underneath is great practice to improve your skills in a language.

What is in for us?

As a creator of content, how does this benefit you, and how does it benefit the university? Clearly, there is a big boon to the retention of students if they can access course materials, and as word spreads of 杏吧原创鈥檚 commitment to a culture and practice of accessibility, this will hopefully also encourage recruitment.

But the practice of captioning videos correctly also helps in other ways. Google cannot search the content of a video but if you create captions you can also publish the transcripts of these which Google can index. In other words, captions improve your search engine optimization and more people will find your content.

Oh, and as we often mention last of all when it comes to accessibility: it is the law 鈥� AODA rules state that all non-live video has to have subtitles on public-facing sites. For non-public sites, such as educational videos in Brightspace, it鈥檚 just the right thing to do (as well as still being subject to civil law).

Now you have read about why we use them, read about how captions can help and highlighting examples – some good, some funny, and some bad.

The post Captivating Captions: Why We Use Captions on Videos appeared first on Web Services.

Managing a site by yourself can take a lot of effort. Thankfully, you have the power to grant website access to anyone you want 鈥� this will allow them to log in to your site and edit it. We recommend that you periodically review your website’s editing group and keep it updated by adding or removing people as needed. Not sure how to do that? Keep reading for our step-by-step guide!

Viewing Editors for CCMS and Framework Sites

Checking who can edit your CCMS or Framework website is as easy as (step) one-two-three!

1. Log in to your website
2. On the dashboard of your site, scroll down to the section titled LDAP – User Access.
3. In this section, you will see the name of your editing group 鈥� it should look something like this: GroupName-CCMS_Editors. Click on the group name to expand it.

Voila! Now you can see a list of all your current website editors.

Viewing Editors for cuTheme Sites

Unfortunately, if you have a cuTheme website, you’re unable to directly view your editors from the dashboard. We are hoping to include this feature in the next cuTheme update. But don’t worry! You can still check who your website editors are by sending us a quick message through the 鈥� we will get back to you as soon as possible with a full list.

Adding or Removing Editors

It’s important to keep your editing groups updated. If an editor no longer needs access to your site, you should remove them from your editing group to prevent them from logging in and making any changes. Conversely, if someone needs to add, edit, publish or delete any posts and pages, you need to add them to your editing group so that they have access to do so.

Giving and revoking editing access is simple! Just and we will take care of it!

The post How to View and Manage Your Website’s Editors appeared first on Web Services.

Did you know that if you are creating a page or post in CuTheme or CMS, you can add a table of contents to your content?

Well, you can! The Table of Contents block in CuTheme and the 鈥淓nable Table of Contents鈥� button in CMS software allow readers to navigate through the headings and jump to different parts of your page or post. However, be aware that CMS only allows creators to include a table of contents on pages, not posts. On the other hand, CuTheme allows you to include a table of contents on both pages and posts. This is an instance when CuTheme has an advantage over CMS.

Benefits of Using a Table of Contents

So, what are the benefits of using a table of contents in your page or post and why should you consider including one in your content?

1. It makes it easier for readers to navigate through different sections of your content.

By including a table of contents, users can easily find the content they are looking for. Readers do not have to spend their precious time scrolling through your content over and over again to find what they are searching for.

2. The table of contents will encourage you to properly use headings and sub-headings.

Proper headings are important because the table of contents will be automatically generated based on the headings on your page. For example, if you have an H2 heading titled, 鈥淭ake Action鈥�, this will appear as the first heading in your table of contents. And if you have an H3 heading titled, 鈥淭able Practice鈥�, this will appear as a subheading underneath your H2 鈥淭ake Action鈥� heading.

The following are examples of the table of contents:

TIP: You can use the table of contents to double-check that your headings are correct.

To learn more about proper heading use, visit this post detailing why headings are important.

3. A table of contents makes your page or post overall more accessible.

Including a table of contents ensures a better user experience since your page appears as organized content with the information and topics presented clearly to the users. Additionally, a table of contents and proper headings assist screen-readers and provide your audience with the ability to easily parse through information.

4. There is an increase in CTR (click-through rate) from Search in Google.

There are several SEO (search engine optimization) benefits to using a table of contents. Because of the Google algorithm, these links associated with your table of contents can result in more relevant search traffic to your content. Using a table of contents can cause search engines to rank your site higher in search results for terms associated with the headings in your table of contents.

5. If used correctly, a table of contents can make your page appear more professional.

Not only is a table of contents important for accessibility reasons, but it also cleans up your page and makes your content appear more professional and can even make content appear aesthetically pleasing. And who does not want their content to look aesthetically pleasing?

How to Use Table of Contents in CMS/ CuTheme

You might be asking; this sounds like an amazing feature, but how do I include a table of contents on my page?

To enable this feature on a CMS site, simply go to the back end of your page and press the 鈥渟how table of contents for this page鈥� button on the right-hand sidebar. Keep in mind that your table of contents will not appear on the backend of your site. To view your table of contents in CMS, press the 鈥減review changes鈥� bar at the top right of the backend of your site. Your table of contents will not appear if you do not include headings on your page. This is another reason why using proper headings is so important.

To enable this feature on a CuTheme page, the steps are a little bit different. To add a table of contents to your page or post, add an Anchor Table Content block to your page or post. You can find

For more clarification, visit .

*A note to CuTheme users: If you are working in CuTheme and you make any changes to your headings, for example, adding a new heading, be sure to update the table of contents by going to the block settings menu and clicking on 鈥淯pdate Items鈥�. Within this menu, you can also hide or show the list numbering, hide, or show the table of contents鈥� title, and make changes to the title.

Now that you know there is a table of contents feature available in both CuTheme and CMS, I highly recommend you include it in most, if not all, of your future content.

The post An Underrated Feature: Why You Should Use Table of Contents appeared first on Web Services.

If you鈥檙e keeping up with Web Services, you might know that we wrote an article about our virtual spring cleaning last month. A vital part of this clean-up was using tags and categories.

Continuing the analogy of spring cleaning, categories and tags are like your bookshelves, cupboards, and other storage. Leaving your things piled on the floor makes it harder for you and others to find what they鈥檙e looking for. Web content is similar: categories and tags provide a structure for your content and make it easier to find, group, and access related content.

Tags or Categories?

If you have read our spring-cleaning article closely, you might notice that we used tags to organize our posts. So, what鈥檚 the difference between a tag and a category?

• Tags are only available for the post content type and provide a secondary way to organize your post content
• Categories can be applied to any content type, not just posts. Because of this, the rest of this article will refer to categories, but if you鈥檙e working with posts, tags will also fulfill many of the same functions.

Are Categories Worth It?

Maybe now, looking at the task before you, you鈥檙e not sure if it鈥檚 worth the time and effort to categorize your content. However, you鈥檒l most likely feel differently the next time you鈥檙e searching for a piece of content on your site.

Rather than wait for the motivation that comes with the panic of realizing you can鈥檛 find a piece of content, get motivated with the following benefits of categorizing your content:

Organization for you and your team

The most noticeable benefit of using categories is probably the improved organization within your website. Like the example above, you鈥檙e most likely to notice a lack of organization when it prevents you from finding the content you鈥檙e looking for.

Since our spring cleaning, we currently have 183 posts on our Web Services website. That鈥檚 quite a lot of content to look through when searching for a specific post, but we鈥檝e used categories to separate our posts into groups of related content that are more easily sifted through.

Organization for your visitors

You鈥檙e not the only one who benefits from organized categories, however. Visitors to your site use your categories to navigate to relevant content. At the bottom of a post in CMS, the post鈥檚 categories are available as links. Clicking them brings the visitor to a list of other posts in that category, helping them navigate your website.

This is great not only to help visitors find content, but also will likely help keep them on your site, making it more likely that they鈥檒l explore your other content and perhaps engage with your calls to action (ex. signing up for a newsletter).

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engines also appreciate the use of categories. Google indexes categories to get an idea of your site鈥檚 content and direct appropriate traffic to it.

Using categories can cause search engines to rank your site higher in search results for terms that are relevant to your site鈥檚 category, resulting in more relevant search traffic.

How to Use Categories

Both CMS and CuTheme have the ability to categorize your content. The basic principles of assigning categories and using them to pull content onto a page are consistent between the two themes, but while CMS has different types of listings for different content types, CuTheme centralizes all listings with the listings block.

Learn how to use categories on your CMS or CuTheme site with the following tutorials:

CMS

• Categories: view our tutorial on categories in CMS here.
• Listing: CMS uses different post elements to list different content types, but the process is pretty similar overall. On your page:
  • Select Add Post Element
  • Choose 鈥淟ist (content type)鈥�, for example 鈥淟ist News鈥�
  • Select the category or categories you would like to be displayed of that content type
  • You may have other customization options in this screen
  • Click Insert Element
  • If you鈥檙e looking to list a specific content type, browse our CMS Help Centre for the content type and there should be instructions on listing it. For example, this is the tutorial for listing posts.

CuTheme

• Categories: .
• Listing: CuTheme uses the listing block to pull content onto a page. After adding this listing block, you just need to pick the type of content you鈥檇 like to display and then you can select categories to list specific content. .

Categories Across Content Types

Since categories are used for many different content types, this means that there are different types of categories on your website. For example, you can鈥檛 put files into an events category. If you have files for students as well as events for students, you will need to create both a 鈥淪tudents鈥� File Category and a 鈥淪tudents鈥� Event Category.

Best Practices

Using categories is already a great step in organizing your website and reaping the SEO and usability benefits. However, here are a few additional tips to help you make the most of your categorizing:

Naming Categories

• When naming your categories, use simple, clear, and descriptive names. For example, don鈥檛 use non-descript category names like 鈥淥ther鈥�, or ambiguous ones like 鈥淚mportant鈥�.
• Be consistent when naming content. For example, if you use singular category names for the most part, don鈥檛 mix in plurals.

Number of Categories

• Use categories that will cover a large group of posts, not just one or two. If you think of categories like a library, you should have sections divided by genre, not by author.
• Don鈥檛 create too many categories. If you have almost as many categories as you do content, then you鈥檙e just as disorganized as you were without them! Again, create general categories rather than hyper-specific ones and you shouldn鈥檛 find that you need too many categories.

Categorizing Content

• Assign posts to more than one category where appropriate. For example, this post is categorized as both 鈥溞影稍� CMS blog鈥� and 鈥淲riting for the Web Tips.鈥� This lets us display the post in multiple locations, as well as gives readers an opportunity to explore either category by clicking the category name at the bottom of the post.

Category Users Across 杏吧原创

Many websites across our virtual 杏吧原创 campus use categories to organize their content. Here are some examples of different sites making good use of categories:

• Pages: The ITS Help Centre, which is a knowledge base style site, has pages listed by category.
• Files: Awards and Financial Aid lists application forms using a file listing on their Forms and Templates page. These files are categorized as either 鈥淏ursaries鈥� or 鈥淔inancial Aid鈥�
• People: Neuroscience uses categories to showcase the accomplishments of their undergraduates after completing their degree. These people posts are organized by category, such as 鈥淓mployed in a Related Field鈥�, 鈥淢edical School鈥�, or 鈥淕raduate School鈥�.
• Posts: 杏吧原创鈥檚 Academic job postings use categories to sort by faculty. By opening the 鈥淔ilter by Faculty or Type of Opportunity鈥� and selecting a type of posting, you are brought to a page where only postings in that category are listed.
• FAQs: The International Student Services Office has a Frequently Asked Questions page which uses FAQ categories to divide the inquiries international students may have by category, such as 鈥淚mmigration鈥�, 鈥淯HIP鈥�, or 鈥淪tudent Life鈥�.

Hopefully these examples of the various uses of categories, as well as the above list of benefits and instructions on how to implement categories, inspire you to categorize content on your own site.

The post Everything in Its Place: How to Use Categories to Organize your Website appeared first on Web Services.