University of Twente automates web accessibility and content quality processes with Acquia Optimize.
The University of Twente is a public technical university located in Enschede, Netherlands that has been placed in the top 170 universities in the world by multiple central ranking tables.
The University of Twente had been using their own content management system (CMS) to manage and maintain their sizable website. This solution was eventually found to be suboptimal, as it did not provide them with an easy way of detecting and prioritizing web governance and accessibility issues.
While their own “WebHare” program did offer some limited functionalities, such as a link checker, some basic accessibility checks, and a redirect pages function, the university soon realized they needed a more sophisticated solution that would give them a simple overview on the priority level and impact of website issues over multiple pages.
Anne Heining, the webmaster in charge of website and social media communications, led a team of 10 to 12 members working with the website on a central level, with additional people brought in from time-to-time to work on specific domains for different faculties. The team’s main challenge was to maintain an up-to-date and error-free website of 20,000 pages that is accessible and flawless for all visitors. Their objectives included:
The university explored a number of possible web governance solutions before deciding to purchase Acquia Optimize’s industry-leading software, which was found to perfectly fit both their needs and, crucially, the budget of a public organization.
Heining had an initial onboarding session with Acquia Optimize, and after a short period of time, got her team up and running with Acquia Optimize by hosting in-house training sessions. ‘‘[Acquia Optimize] puts everything together and gives me an overview that really helps me prioritize where to start,” Heining said.
The Acquia Optimize platform's Quality Assurance, Accessibility, and Policy modules made it easy for the university to discover, prioritize, and deal with potential issues before they became a problem for either visitors or staff.
Acquia Optimize's Quality Assurance module helped the university with its goal of flawless content and actionable links, which are crucial to keeping the university's audience engaged in the website. To increase the web team’s effectiveness, Acquia Optimize’s domains grouping and tagging system made it easy to assign pages to the right person on the team. The daunting task of maintaining and updating over 20,000 pages became more manageable for the staff of 10 to 12.
For more effective brand management and consistency across all university pages, Acquia Optimize’s Policy module checks for content inconsistency or incorrectness across multiple pages. For example, the university was able to ensure the university’s name was spelled correctly across all pages. The Policy module also made compliance with GDPR and data privacy regulations easier. By enabling the tracking of HTML code from other services on their website, such as scripts for social media providers, Heining and her team were able to ensure that they did not run any tracking scripts that users had not consented to.
The university used Acquia Optimize’s Accessibility module to identify the causes of accessibility issues and how to fix them. This, in turn allowed the web team to start planning ahead and proactively incorporate accessibility best practices into their day-to-day routines going forward. With the Fast Track feature, Heining and her team were also able to prioritize and resolve accessibility issues in bulk. As a result of the time savings afforded from Acquia Optimize, the team is able to plan in advance and prioritize the areas of accessibility that would have the greatest impact for both staff and visitors. They have established weekly practices where they meet to discuss and solve issues found using Acquia Optimize, thereby helping one another move forward with their associated tasks.
