Minutes (Jan. 25, 2006) Web Advisory Committee
Present: Dr. Alison Beck, Heather Cura, Dr. Keith Krolick, Alan Miller, Tom Raymond, Dr. Vid Desibhatla, Doug Hartzler, Katie Prentice, Gilbert Sosa, Debbie Valle,
Mary Yanes, and Jim Barrett.
The chair, Dr. Alison Beck, called the meeting to order. Committee members approved the Oct. 26, 2005, minutes.
Jim Barrett gave the webmaster's report. He said:
- Server traffic in December rose 26 percent, to 1,705,828 page views, and 15 percent for the calendar year 2005.
- Dr. John Calhoon, a member of the Computing Resources Committee, had sent a suggestion that
directory listings for staff and faculty also show a photo of the person. The members discussed the idea, and agreed
that photos should be optional, and displayed only with a staff or faculty
member's consent. Doug Hartzler said he thought the issue is one that would be considered as part of an upgrade
to the Human Capital Management software used by the Office of Human Resources. He said he would contact leaders
of the project about the suggestion.
- A work group would meet in February to discuss the need for Spanish translations
on the university web site.
- He had added a legend, or key, to the abbreviations for buildings listed in the faculty/staff directory
- DCATS and the Computing Resources Department have begun using Macromedia Contribute for content management as a test of the product.
In new business, Mr. Barrett said the Medical School had requested a listing for the Graduate Medical
Education web site on the university homepage. He said the link would say "Residents," and suggested
removing a link called "Current Students" under the homepage heading of "Students." Several members
said the graduate program is not university-wide in nature, and unsuited for a listing on the
university homepage. They suggested that the link would be appropriate on the homepage of the Medical School. In
examining the links in question, the committee also thought the "Current Students" link should be called "Student Life," and
asked the webmaster to make the change.
Dr. Beck said the committee had a second item of new business dealing with web accessibility guidelines. Mr. Barrett gave a summary of
proposed changes to Texas Administrative Code Section 206, and a document describing the changes and his proposal for
meeting the new guidelines.
He said two items deserved particular attention: Requirements for captioning web videos, and training web developers. The
changes would require a substantial outlay to add captioning, and about $4,200 for one-day training courses for groups of 12 developers.
Mr. Barrett said the university could seek exemptions from some requirements, and, in fact, exemptions would be specificially
allowed in new language proposed for the revised Section 206, which is scheduled to take effect Sept. 1.
Exemptions could be issued by President Cigarroa on the basis that the university lacks the money and staff to achieve compliance, Mr. Barrett said.
He said the exemptions, however, would not affect web accessibility law, which is a federal law contained in the U.S. Rehabilitation Act.
Dr. Beck said she thought the decision about claiming any exemption ought to be considered by the
Executive Committee and the university's legal counsel. Several committeee members discussed the potential
scope of work and its expense. Heather Cura said compliance relies on web administrators being able to monitor
a growing volume of published
pages. Ms. Cura said additional monitoring is unlikely because of heavy workloads. Mr. Barrett
said software is available to do code validation, but its results often are poor.
Ms. Cura said she agreed with seeking an exemption, but she said the Health Science Center ought to
adhere to a policy of
making accommodations for any web users who needed material presented in a special way because of
a handicap. Gilbert Sosa, speaking about video captioning, said departments could be urged
to add captioning to any videos they produce. Mr. Hartzler suggested seeking exemptions from video captioning, because of cost, and web-page accessibility, because of the
lack of central publishing controls
or reliable software to validate web coding. Mr. Barrett asked if that was the consensus, and no one disagreed.
In other business, Dr. Keith Krolick suggested finding better places to put a link to eCV, the electronic
curriculum vitae system. He also said it is difficult to find links to the university's
faculty tenure and promotions information. Mr. Hartzler said the portal, inside.uthscsa.edu, has related
links under its "Faculty" tab. Ms. Cura suggested running a survey, or having a form available to web users, to
help identify the information or web sites that users have trouble finding.
There was no other business, and the meeting was adjourned.
-- Minutes prepared by Jim Barrett
-- Approved Feb. 22, 2006
