Response posted by Stoyan and Iva on the previous version of MentorSpace on Monday 19 July 2010.

 

Hello,Iliya.

Me and Iva really  enjoyed going through the site. We noticed a few things which can facilitate the users and make the site user-friendly as Andrean said.

 

The first thing that made a great impression is that the site is very easy to use but there are still some things and issues which can be approved. For example when we were registering a problem emerged - our username was Stoyan_Iva and it was not appropriate because of the "_"(there can be used only letters) but there was nothing to tell us that we made a mistake, there was nothing to tell us what was our mistake and what we should do.

 

The second thing we want to point out is that when we look through someone`s friends there are only names without pictures which is very unuseful. It would be easier if there were some pictures to help us recognise who is behind the screen name. 

 

And according to us the thing that Andrean mentioned with the country flags is very useful and can enable the users to find their peers by region.

 

We hope we were helpful with our comments and we are waiting with anticipation for the new version. 

Dean Phillips 554 days ago

Response posted by Andrean Lazarov on the previous version of MentorSpace on 14 July 2010:

 

Hallo Iliya,

 

Thank you very much for your nice word about our work.

 

I have one comment regarding the URL. If you type http://mentorspace.peermentor.org the user will see the admin page of the site which consist of folders which could confused the end user. Also I think that "www" should be used in the next domain.

It will be very useful if all users are combined by country flag. It will enable the local users easy to find their peers from their country.

 

If you check the accessibility of the website through W3C Validator it will should 41 errors which means it still need to be revised since during PEPE project we have also people with disabilities as peer educators.

 

I really hope that my comments will be taken into account and will make the site more useful and user friendly.

 

Best wishes

 

Andrean

Dean Phillips 554 days ago

Response posted by David Townsend Jones on the previous version of MentorSpace on 20 July 2010:

 

Hello everyone

 

The issue mentioned by Andrean about the accessibility of MentorSpace is important and will be taken seriously by Adastra. At the same time I would like to make sure that expectations are not set too high — because we do not want to cause disappointment.

 

Accessibility is important not just as a universal requirement but also specifically for PEPE, since the project, as Andrean says (and we already very well knew), involves a number of peer educators with disabilities. For web developers like us, though, the challenge is to go as far as we are able in order to achieve the best possible level of accessibility within the budget and schedule that our clients have been able to offer us. If accessibility is a key objective for a project, this has to be made clear from the outset, so that both the budget and the schedule will allow the considerable added time needed not only to develop the initial website but also to make it as widely accessible as possible.

 

Unfortunately the PEPE partners were not given sufficient Leonardo funding to allow them to offer the sort of budget that will allow MentorSpace to be developed to meet the needs of all potential users. Therefore our contract with the partners – understandably – makes no mention at all of accessibility.

 

We have, though, frequently discussed the question of accessibility with the partners and have promised them our commitment to do the best we can within the available budget.

 

For visually impaired users we recommend that both the PEPE website and MentorSpace be viewed in Firefox rather than any other browser. You can then install the free NoSquint add-on to Firefox, a simple utility that allows you not only to control the zoom level of the whole website but also independently to set the zoom level for the text at any level that’s comfortable for you. This is a great bonus not only for visually impaired users but also for those (like me) who like to make best use of their computer’s capabilities by choosing the highest available screen resolution, but who then sometimes struggle with text that is too small for comfortable viewing. NoSquint solves all of this and is available at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2592/.

 

For users with hearing impairments, screen reading software is available for websites with normal html textual content, and we will investigate this and make the necessary recommendations. We will also develop simple keyboard solutions to enable users who cannot operate a mouse to navigate the site.

 

Much greater challenges appear once we start thinking about more advanced features developed in response to requests from our clients, such as video or Flash features. For best accessibility it would be better not to use Flash or video at all — but this would seem an unnecessary limitation on the creative possibilities of the web when it comes to all users.

 

To make video and Flash content truly accessible it would be necessary to transcribe the content as text so that screen reading software can audibly tell the impaired user what is in the video or Flash animation. Unfortunately this would greatly extend the development time for these elements. For example, I anticipate that the film I shot in Albena will end up being a 15-minute (or so) documentary. The shooting, editing and production will have taken well over 2 weeks to complete. If we added to this a requirement to transcribe 15 minutes of documentary, the production would run well into 3 weeks. Unfortunately the budget simply cannot support a production of that length — and exactly the same would apply to all videos shown on the site.

 

To take Andrean’s comments one by one:

 

1) “I have one comment regarding the URL. If you type http://mentorspace.peermentor.org  the user will see the admin page of the site which consist of folders which could confused the end user. Also I think that ‘www’ should be used in the next domain.”
>>> The address Andrean used only briefly pointed at an admin page while development work was going on.  It now points directly at the site. The domain name cannot be changed unless the partners want us to do so.

 

2) “It will be very useful if all users are combined by country flag. It will enable the local users easy to find their peers from their country.”
>>> I’m afraid that country flags would not work on a platform like this (unlike the PEPE website’s Joomla! platform).  On ELGG sites like MentorSpace only the general system content can be categorised under different languages.

 

3) “If you check the accessibility of the website through W3C Validator it will should 41 errors which means it still need to be revised since during PEPE project we have also people with disabilities as peer educators.”

 

>>> The W3C Validator is a very useful tool but will pick up errors on most websites. Facebook has 40 errors; YouTube has 129 errors. The version of MentorSpace Andrean tested was the prototype developed for the previous NetMentor project: the new MentorSpace we are about to launch has been tested and only produced 30 errors, while the secure 1-to-1 mentoring platform version of MentorSpace has only 11 errors. So I think we are already well on the way...

 

To sum up, we will do our best with all of this and will take our efforts as far as we possibly can. But it is certain that we will not be able to address every single accessibility issue.

 

Best wishes,

 

David
(Adastra)

Dean Phillips 554 days ago

Response posted by Andrean Lazarov on the previous version of MentorSpace on 20 July 2010:

 

Dear all,

 

Thank you very much for your comments and clarifications.

 

David - I think that the Accessibility is an issue which is not necessarily to be mentioned in any partnership contracts and agreements since especially in UK there is governmental documents about this as an obligatory issue when we talk about users with visual/hearing impairments and then the Accessibility should be AAA level.

 

This is also a rule by the EACEA which is stated in all recommendations for setting up websites for disabled stakeholders.I also know from my experience that the Accessibility is not matter of money and budget, it is only an issue which CMS you will use. There are many Open Source CMS as Wordpress, ATutor etc. which could be used for that issue.Regarding the URL I think the “/elgg” should be removed from the home URL in order not to confuse the users if they want to reach it.

 

What about the language versions of MentorSpace – it will be available on all partners languages or only in English? Our experience is that usually when we talk about TOI projects the websites and platforms should be available in all partners languages in order to increase their dissemination and the access to them by as much as possible users. The flags will be also very useful as our peer educators mentioned in the previous commentThank you again for your collaboration

 

Best wishes

 

Andrean

Dean Phillips 554 days ago

Andrean: many thanks for all your comments and feedback. I will try to answer your comments in the order you wrote them.

The point I was trying to make is that the amount of work that’s possible to do IS determined purely by the budget, and by the client brief that goes with the budget that’s available. We were given a relatively modest budget and a very specific brief by the partners to develop not just MentorSpace and 1-to-1 but also the PEPE website and extranet, plus a number of training documents and digital products, and also to do filming and editing and to attend several European meetings.

ELGG, the open-source CMS chosen for MentorSpace, was agreed with the partners because it is the most suitable CMS for what was wanted: to develop a social/professional networking platform for the mentoring community, along similar lines to Facebook etc. WordPress and other CMS systems were not designed for this purpose and so we could not recommend them.

We agree about removing /elgg from the URL: this was only temporarily present during the development phase. However, the ideal solution would be to give MentorSpace a proper unique web identity by purchasing its own domain name. I will certainly propose this solution to the partners.

The languages issue is rather complicated. Of course you are right that TOI projects should have multilingual websites, which we have developed for both the PEPE website and extranet. However, the brief the partners gave us for MentorSpace was that it should be in English. The purpose of MentorSpace is to encourage peer mentors and educators from all over Europe to interact, and to do this they will need to adopt the most common language, which, for better or worse, is English. (I speak as a Welshman conscious of the risks to our own little ancient language of living next door to a language that is a global giant!) So our brief was to develop MentorSpace as an English-language platform.

The flags idea would be lovely if we ever DO develop a multilingual version of MentorSpace. Unfortunately they work (more or less!) on the Joomla CMS platform (which has been used for the PEPE website) but currently they are not supported by ELGG.

Thanks again for all your input into redeveloping MentorSpace.

David

David Townsend Jones 554 days ago