[Yr7-10it] ANU Networked Information Systems

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Perhaps of interest ..

Tom writes,

> From:   Tom Worthington <Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au>
> Date:   Sat, 02 May 2009 09:36:29 +1000 
> Subject:  Designing an influenza pandemic web site for Australia 
 

I have set students of "Networked Information Systems" 
(COMP2410/6340) at the ANU the task to design a influenza pandemic 
web site for the Australian public. As I have been teaching them to 
design emergency web sites, this seemed a timely topic. There is an 
excerpt from the assignment question appended, and a longer version 
with links, on my blog at: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/05/designing-influenza-pandemic-web-
site.html>.

---

Australian National University - Department of Computer Science
Networked Information Systems - COMP2410/6340

Assignment 2 - Website Accessibility

On 29 April 2009 the Director-General of the World Health 
Organization (WHO), raised the level of influenza pandemic alert from 
phase 4 to phase 5. All countries were advised to immediately 
activate their pandemic preparedness plans to combat Swine influenza.

In this assignment you will examine web sites used for providing 
advice to the public about influenza and design a prototype web site 
using the techniques learnt in the course. ...

The Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing (DHA) has 
provided a web page with links to detailed information about Swine 
Influenza Outbreaks. However, that information may be difficult to 
understand for the average member of the general public. Imagine you 
work for the Australian Government and your task is to design an 
easier to read web site based on the DHA page as it was at 30 Apr 
2009 07:09:19 GMT.

The web site will need to meet accessibility and mobile device 
standards. The web site will be read by large numbers of people at 
once and so will need to use the minimum of bandwidth. It will be 
read by people under stress and so be easy to read. ...

You must:

* CONVERT THE HTML of the content from the existing web page to valid 
XHTML Basic 1.1 which achieves at least 80/100 on Mobile OK tests and 
passes Level Double A of the W3C - Web Content Accessibility 
Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0) as tested by the TAW (Web Accessibility Test)

* CONVERT ALL PRESENTATION ELEMENTS and in-line styles to appropriate 
rules in a new valid external style sheet called access.css

* REMOVE ANY TABLES in the webpages which are not used for displaying 
tabular data, and replace them with CSS rules

* REMOVE OR REPLACE EXCESSIVELY LARGE OR IRRELEVANT IMAGES. You are 
encouraged to consider the use of Pictograms, as well as links to 
audio, video and other multimedia content.

* MAKE ANY CHANGES TO THE XHTML CODE which you consider to either: 
enhance the accessibility of the page, or improve the compliance of 
the page with web standards

* DISCUSS your design decisions in a report

* ESTIMATE THE DOWNLOAD TIME of your page (using the access.css 
stylesheet) using a 28.8 kbit/s Iridium satellite modem (as used by 
the Australian Department of Defence). Suggest ways in which you 
might reduce the download time. These question must be answered in 
the form of an additional section in your report.

Your resulting page need not be identical in appearance to the web 
pages the source material was prepared from. You need only create the 
home page, but can create dummy links to other pages (which you need 
not create). The emphasis should be on a simple and efficient design. 
The page should be designed to display both on a smart phone and a 
desktop computer. Design decisions about the way the page looks must 
be discussed in your report. ...

---


Tom Worthington FACS HLM 
tom.worthington at tomw.net.au http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Australian National University  

--

Cheers Tom
Stephen Loosley
Member, Victorian
Institute of Teaching