Content research

This week there was a major update for WordPress (4.7 Vaughan), so I updated this journal site and ran the requisite theme and plugin updates. Thankfully my decision to create a child theme has served me well as the updates were harmonious with my existing customisations. I don’t think that I will be adding more plugins at this point, but I will go through my posts and ensure that the header hierachy is correct for accessibility reasons. I will also go through my posts and make sure that links open in the current window instead of a new tab, as this was flagged in both my accessibility book (pickering, 2016) and in Nielsen’s Top 10 mistakes in web design article (2011). Also I will go through and review my heading levels as this was a persistant flag in the WCAG 2.0 inspections and it is easy to get it wrong e.g. h4 before h3 for some kind of aesthetic reason - I’m sure that I have done this somewhere without realising.

Topic research

I have been engaging in quite a bit of topic-based research related to the content of the site. Most specifically the publication, Making IT work: Harnessing the power of health information technology to improve care in England (Wachter, 2016). This report highlights the need to empower patients to share their data with apps and wearables and also the need for interoperability. Interestingly upon a second reading it is almost like the health equivalent of the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policy, which I have observed and supported through my day job (MacNeill, 2015). I will use this information in tandem with a statistical report which Dr. Fotis provided related to hip replacements (National Joint Registry, 2016) and broad reading in the perioperative subject area (see reference list in my next post) to create a story for the patient. The good news is that Dr. Fotis likes the site so far, so I am on the right path.

Adding interactivity

In addition to the contact form that is mentioned in the task scenarios I wanted to add an easy way of visitors to add feedback. I thought that a poll might be a nice way of doing this. I investigated a few ways of doing this, but essentially I wanted to provide two options for visitors to choose from using radio buttons. Then store the values and display the results after the user had selected their option/choice. This turned out to be no easy task and I will compile all of my references related to this in the next post. As I writing parts of this post retrospectively I can say that I was working on parts of this poll, on and off, for the better part of two weeks.

References

MacNeill, F. (2015). Approaching apps for learning, teaching and research. In A. Middleton (Ed.), Smart Learning teaching and learning with smartphones and tablets in post-compulsory education (pp. 238–263). Sheffield, England: Sheffield Hallam University. Nielsen, J. (2011, January 1). Top 10 mistakes in web design. Retrieved December 12, 2016, from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-10-mistakes-web-design/ National Joint Registry. (2016). 13th Annual report 2016 National Joint Registry for England, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man. Retrieved December 12, 2016, from http://www.njrreports.org.uk/Portals/0/PDFdownloads/NJR%2013th%20Annual%20Report%202016.pdf Pickering, H. (2016). Inclusive design patterns (Kindle ed.). Freiburg, Germany: Smashing Magazine GmbH. Wachter, R. M. (2016, September 7). Making IT work: Harnessing the power of health information technology to improve care in England. Retrieved 12, 2016, from https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/using-information-technology-to-improve-the-nhs

Fiona MacNeill

Fiona MacNeill

Learning Consultant & UX Designer

Passionate about creating inclusive and accessible experiences, tools, and services for learning and doing.