The most successful workspaces on Futures have well-managed, accessible content that members find useful and engaging. Creating accessible content is crucial to ensure that the information on your workspace is inclusive and relevant to individuals of all abilities, while making it engaging will captivate your members interest and encourage interaction. To learn more about why web accessibility is important read our blog Spotlight on Accessibility.
These top tips will offer practical strategies to help you design content that is easy to consume and that will resonate with your audience.
We also have a community huddle recording here on guidance for this:
1. Introduce your workspace and onboard new members.
2. Create relevant and interesting content
3. Keep members informed about new content
4. Create a clear structure of content
5. Encourage user generated content
9. Give links unique and descriptive names
11. Provide transcripts & captions for audio and video content
12. Make uploaded documents accessible.
1. Introduce your workspace and onboard new members.
Ensure that new members feel welcomed and informed about your workspace by utilising the text and images dashboard item to create a workspace introduction. Clearly articulate the mission and objectives of your workspace, highlight key areas such as events and forums, and encourage interaction among members.
Provide a get-started guide and consider recording a brief video overview of your workspace, what the main features and functions are and the different areas, this will help set out the expectation of users and how they should engage with your community.
2. Create relevant and interesting content
Don’t add content for the sake of it, make sure the content you are creating is relevant to your members and target audience. Informative content that is useful will keep your users coming back for more and help build your community.
Maintain a balance between text and visual elements in your content. Use a variety of formats such as images, videos, and infographics to make your content engaging.
During the early stages of your workspace, take the approach with content that less is more. Only include what is useful and let the content grow with your members as the direction of your workspace takes shape.
Read our support articles to see what elements you can create in your workspace.
3. Keep members informed about new content
Let your members know about new content that is important to encourage users to visit the workspace. By summarising workspace activity, you will encourage your members to engage and contribute.
You can do this in a number of ways:
- Send out a regular newsletter to your workspace membership highlighting recent activities.
- Post in your forum so users are notified that an important item has been added.
- Use the carousel dashboard item as a what’s new or recent news feature on your homepage, users will get used to checking this for updates, remember to keep updating it though!
- For an automated process use the recent items dashboard item, you can select to show all new items, or you can specify things such as discussions so members can quickly see what the hot topics on your workspace are.
Read our support centre article How to display the latest activity on your workspace.
4. Create a clear structure of content
Organise your content effectively by creating a structured folder hierarchy and by using clear and descriptive titles for folders and documents uploaded. Categorising your content effectively will make it easier for users to navigate your workspace and find the information they need. When linking buttons make sure the buttons label matches the intended page title. Use names and terms that are commonly understood.
Read our support centre article Top tips for designing your workspace.
5. Encourage user generated content
Build engagement by encouraging members to contribute their own content. Strike a balance between content generated by the workspace team and users. Depending on the nature of your workspace will depend on how comfortable you will be letting users create content.
We strongly recommend using a forum in your workspace and encouraging participation. You can minimise email traffic and having to send out documents and keeping track of responses via email by using a forum and this is a great way of having a community ask and answer queries from users.
You can allow users to create specific items in certain folders by utilising the team permissions.
Read our support centre article Top tips for setting permissions on your workspace.
6. Regularly Review Content
Put in place a process to regularly review workspace content and keep information up to date and relevant. Delete old copies when you replace them and ensure your workspace invitation email reflects up to date information about the workspace. latest things happening on the workspace.
Read our support centre article Top tips on refreshing workspace content.
7. Use clear language
Use clear and concise language when creating or uploading content. Avoid jargon and technical terms that your users may not understand. Trying to keep things simple and avoiding complex sentence structures will mean more users can digest your content. Avoid using only abbreviations as not everyone may be aware of their meaning, if you include an abbreviation, make sure you also spell it out, this will improve the searchability of your content.
8. Tag to improve search
Implement a taxonomy of tags to add to the folders and documents on your workspace. Tagging content will help improve the search functionality within your workspace by allowing users to quickly locate content of interest to them.
Tagging can also help you manage your content and allow you to quickly understand what the key areas of your workspace are.
9. Give links unique and descriptive names
We have all been guilty of hyperlinking text as ‘please click here’. However, this makes things difficult for some users. Best practise is to make sure that all links are descriptive and meaningful as this will help users who may be using a screen reader to know where the link will take them as they may not have the context preceding ‘click here’.
Here are some quick Do Nots for hyperlinking to content:
DO NOT link full URLs (unless the document is likely to be printed, then you may wish to include the full web address)
Bad example: Please see our Support Centre by visiting https://futures.zendesk.com/hc/en-gb/categories/9579815548445-Using-Futures
DO NOT use the words Click Here, Read More or other common phrases.
Bad example: Please visit our Support Centre by clicking here.
DO NOT link to two different URLs using the same words on the same page.
DO NOT link to the same URL using different words on the same page.
DO NOT link whole paragraphs or sentences.
A good example would be ‘To learn more about managing your workspace please visit our Futures Support Centre’.
10. Make images accessible
Making sure images are accessible is important. The main way to do this is add alternative text (known as alt text), this is giving a clear and concise description of what is shown in the image, this will mean that any user using a screen reader will not miss out of the information that is held there.
You can make your images accessible on Futures in a number of ways.
If the image is decorative then leave the alternative text blank, this will then be skipped by a screen reader.
Add an image using the image button and removing the link in the options. Image buttons have a specific field for you to describe the alternative text
Add an image using the text and images dashboard item, here the alt text is the title of the image, so if decorative leave blank, if not explain what is shown.
Do not screenshot text and use this as an image, copy it out using the text and images function instead.
Alt text can also be added to tables in Excel, for example to provide a summary analysis of a large dataset which would be difficult to analyse with a screen reader.
11. Provide transcripts & captions for audio and video content
For all video and audio content subtitles and transcripts can mean these can be accessed by users with visual and auditory impairments. While services like Microsoft Teams can transcribe calls, it is often not perfect so while technology makes the process easier, some manual editing is needed to ensure information is accurate and understandable.
12. Make uploaded documents accessible.
Ensure that the documents you upload adhere to basic accessibility principles.
Some key takeaways are:
- Use Left alignment rather than Justified text. This ensures that spacing between words is even.
- Use a recommend font such as Arial, Verdana and Calibri
- Avoid using PDF’s where possible as they are often not accessible, if you must use them, have an alternative you can offer on request.
- Use Bold to emphasise items. Avoid italics and Underlining.
- For Microsoft Word, it is recommended to use a font size of 12
- For PowerPoint, it is recommended to use a font size 24 and 45 titles
To learn more about making your Microsoft office content accessible check out their online training: