User Requirements
The project started with gathering and analysing user requirements from stakeholders in different parts of the value chain, focusing on the authoring process from different perspectives.
To ensure that the templates developed in the project are useful for web authors, feasible from a technical perspective, and that the end result has an impact on end users with disabilities, mapping of user needs with relevant solutions is key.
There are three main target groups of the project:
- The users of the templates - web authors, primarily in the public sector – are the primary users of templates that we would like to support.
- The enablers - Episerver partners including the templates in their offering – are key to the success of the project uptake and spread, and therefore their views on prioritisation and feasibility is important.
- The real beneficiaries of templates having built-in accessibility by default - end users with disabilities – are always leading the way when it comes to decisions on which accessibility problems are most important to solve.
The methodology used for ensuring the templates developed in the project are meeting the needs and requirements of these three target groups is a combination of online survey, online workshops and interviews. This way, the research team has had the possibility to receive quantitative as well as qualitative responses. The findings have also been compared to the results of stakeholder engagement in the We4Authors pilot project.
The main results of the first phase can be summarised as follows:
- There is a great demand for templates with built-in accessibility features in the Episerver community
- The users of the templates are a heterogenous group with varying knowledge on web publishing in general and even more so when it comes to accessible publishing which means templates should at best cover both simple and more advanced functionality
- Out of nine specific items that web authors claim to be most challenging, eight may be addressed in the templates
Next steps:
Based on the findings around user requirements, the features will be sorted, prioritised and analysed from the perspective of technical feasibility. This will be assessed including both factors related to the Episerver framework, and broader factors that are common to the core functionalities of other authoring tools, shown in the We4Authors pilot project. The result of this activity will be a list of templates and objects that will be prototyped and tested.
Built-in accessibility offers support to web authors
Funded by the European Commission.
