Creating inclusive digital experiences – getting your content contributors onboard | Doug Burgett, University of Illinois

In today’s digital world, creating an inclusive visitor experience is often discussed but never really implemented. One of the biggest challenges facing successful implementation is taming the behaviors of a large base of content contributors. In this episode, Virgil is joined by Doug Burgett of the University of Illinois, to discuss his first-hand experience with this topic. Doug is the Creative Director for Marketing Communications for Enrollment Management (translation: he markets for admissions). In this role, Doug has primary responsibility for the most important areas of the University of Illinois website and must ‘wrangle’ a diverse population of contributors who possess a variety of skill levels.

During the podcast, Virgil and Doug discuss the challenges we all face keeping our digital properties accessible. Add to the mix that we have to train our contributors to use the tools at our disposal in an educated way. According to Burgett, “When content editors use WYSIWYG editors they don’t realize that as the enter content into the editor, code is actually being created in the back end. Knowing this helps content editors to Realize the power they have at their fingertips.” Once consistency among content editors has been achieved, Virgil and Doug discuss bad practices to avoid, look at some of the monitoring tools and techniques you can employ, and explore how to provide your customers with all-inclusive digital experiences.

Resources discussed:

• https://developers.google.com/amp/ - Google’s mobile first development methodology
• https://www.w3.org/TR/wai-aria-practices-1.1/ - Understanding the use of ARIA tags
• https://fae.disability.illinois.edu/anonymous/?Anonymous%20Report=/ - University of Illinois’s Functional Accessibility Evaluator
• https://webaim.org/ - Online accessibility compliance auditor
• https://www.paciellogroup.com/resources/contrastanalyser - Accessibility color contrast tester

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