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December 6, 2023 - Updates, priorities of the week

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Back to GC Web Priorities Meetings - Réunions des Priorités Web du GC

Meeting information

Agenda

1. Updates

2. Roundtable

Notes and action item

Roundtable

Health Canada

Principal Publisher

  • Mail went out from us about the GCWeb release on November 23rd, if you are a GC Web user and haven't received the mail, contact: maria.behan@servicecanada.gc.ca.

Department of National Defense

  • Usability updates to Military pay rates are live

Agriculture and Agri-food Canada

  • They were using MS Dynamics but having serious technical issues since the spring. May be looking for a new solution if Microsoft can't fix it.

Canadian Food Inspection Agency

  • They have started using GC Notify

Parks Canada

Canadian Heritage

Updates from CBSA:

CBSA published its Year in Review 2023 news release and web stats (with infographics).

They are also going out with a holiday travel tips news release on approximately December 13.

DTO Presentation - Canada.ca Style guide updates

Presentation: Style Guide updates

  • Improved functional image example. We wanted to remove the image of a chart as it’s often better to dynamically create charts and graphs from table data if possible, as opposed to writing a long description for them. We instead chose a flow chart with a solid long description as the example for a functional image.
  • Updated decorative image example. We removed the example that was there as it featured a carousel which we generally don’t recommend using. We also felt that a picture of an RCMP officer in the official uniform on an item about the RCMP could actually be argued as being a purposeful image as opposed to decorative. So we added something a bit more generic and also added advice about using the null indicator as alternative text.
  • We made a small tweak to the simple table examples. We removed the footer as it was extra data that we didn’t need in there. Though it was coded correctly we felt it was unnecessarily distracting from the message for content providers to use the simplest structure possible for tables.  
  • We continue to work through requests that have been sent or flagged to us. In our next group of changes we plan to replace the reference to refer to the Canadian Style as it has been archived and replaced by Writing Tips Plus. But first we need to do a review to see if we just need to switch one-for-one or if we need to include additional references. The Plain language working group will resume in January to complete work started earlier this year. And we want to look at enhancing the guidance around images and ensure everything is consistent and in line with current best practices.
  • Feel free to reach out to DTO team is you have any suggestions or comments for updates

DTO Presentation - Audit of templates and patterns

  • Currently 72 patterns in the audit
  • We checked over to see if templates and patterns were currently being used by departments/agencies
  • Checked if the patterns/templates were mandatory
  • Discussed as a team and made preliminary recommendations for which ones to retire
  • Found 29 possibilities for removal
  • Commonalities of ones for removal
    • Older, superseded by new ones
    • No code, just pictures
    • Some were too simple to be helpful
    • Some were made for single instance
  • Commonality to retain:
    • Widely used
    • Useful for helping users complete tasks
    • Mandatory

Comment: Removing Canda.ca homepage template makes sense, also glad to see carousels go.

Comment: Is there a change management plan for these changes?

Answer: Just because the template is not in the library anymore, doesn’t mean departments have to change any pages that use the template.

Question: Any value in keeping items as examples of what not to do, with explanation of why they are not good designs.  

Answer: Yes, good point, we will definitely consider this.

Question: Some of CDS Design patterns contradict Canda.ca design system. Which one should we use. For example buttons.


Answer: Good question, this is a change management issue we’re working through. We’re working with our CDS colleagues on this issue, and it’s something we will need to work through in upcoming months.

Question: Have these elements been assessed for WCAG AA?

Answer: We did not look at accessibility for this audit. But through development , they have all been looked at for accessibility issues, even though some may be out of date.

DTO - Findability Presentation

  • The web is changing, has implications for GC web findability
  • New technology such as bots, AI, controversy over how this tech is “trained”
  • Knowledge graphs and large language models are ways to give users of your website good answers
  • Big shift is semantic search instead of lexical search, this is more sophisticated
  • This shift lets computers infer new knowledge, can be very powerful
  • Big impact on how Google’s SEO operates
  • Semantic markup rather than use of keywords
  • Google more orientated towards its paying customers, more product oriented
  • GOC needs to develop a new strategy for schema markup
  • Have created a slack channel to collectively work on the strategy schema-markup-balisage - GC web comms - Slack

Questions/comments

Question: We seem to have a training gap to work on the schema strategy?

Answer:

Not many formal training/resources at this time. The markup uses json ld, which is not difficult to use. People can do a lot of self learning. If we can provide sample markup, it would be a good way to go. Sharing examples on GitHub.

Comment: Finding tax/CRA content is difficult in searches. There are competing products from business etc. We need to make sure that the new schema is not used to cover up bad content.

Comment: HC worked with Google to use FAQ schema to enhance search results for COVID-19 content.

Are you sharing this information with OCIO?

Answer: OCIO has not been involved in web issues as much recently.

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