One step beyond - empowering the volunteers
Severity: major
Audience: large
Fiscal effect: ?
Policy question: no
Reported: ?
Link: http://discuss.aauw.org
Now if even I have trouble finding something, I think that’s an indication that the member center organization needs to be improved. We’ve heard “make it user friendly” over and over again, but one aspect suddenly hit me this morning.
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Severity: minor
Audience: small
Fiscal effect: could be
Policy question: yes
Reported: no
Link: http://www.aauw.org/about/aauw_corporate_overview.pdf
The Corporate Overview is seriously out of date (not updated for board restructuring or changes to LAF). It is still, however, linked from
Member Center > Branches and States, Other links and is first link on the left-hand navigation menu of the About Us section.
While insiders don’t need this document, it is useful in introducing the Association to new people — funders or C/U partners, say — and those who may find it on the web site and then later find that it is incorrect may form an unfavorable impression of the organization.
I’d suggest just removing the links if there’s no bandwidth to correct the document.
Severity: minor
Audience: moderate
Fiscal effect: no
Policy question: no
Reported: ?
Link: http://discuss.aauw.org
The “mail this to a friend” link at the bottom of discussion threads doesn’t seem to correctly craft the e-mail message. Even though there is a header
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
The message appears as
<font face=verdana,arial size=2>Here is a something you may find of interest, I read this on AAUW Discussion Boards forum.
<a href=”http://discuss.aauw.org//messageview.cfm?catid=44&threadid=71″>http://discuss.aauw.org//messageview.cfm?catid=44&threadid=71
</a></font>
While some mail clients may correctly display the clickable links, Eudora does not.
Workaround: Either edit the tags out of the outgoing message or use the printer icons (either “view topic in raw text format” at the top of a thread or “print this topic” above a specific message) and then copy that window and paste it into the body of a mail message. [Violates my principle of having data appear in only one place, but probably more user friendly in the long run.] Note, however, that if you use this once, the window that pops up may be hidden the next time you use it. Best to close the window each time when you’re done with it.
Severity: minor
Reported: no
Not really directly our problem, but the Shop AAUW site is “announcing the 2004 AAUW Online Catalog” along with the “Spring Cleaning” sale.
Audience: small, but important
Severity: ??
Fiscal effect: ??
Policy question: yes
Reported: yes (KW 10/05)
Link: www.aauw.org
ADA and section 508 compliance of the site needs to be improved in the next version of the site - but this is, of course, a moving target with browser functionality changing what needs to be done. For instance, in IE, the “larger text” option isn’t really very large — and IE’s “View > Text Size > Larger” is disabled. This isn’t as much of a problem in more modern browsers (i.e. Firefox with its zoom functionality which allows the text size to continue to increase).
In any event accessibility reviews of the new web site by someone who is expert in the subtleties of this area would help, but, would, of course need to be scheduled and funded.
Audience: moderate
Severity: moderate
Fiscal effect: no
Policy question: yes
Reported: yes (KW 10/05)
Link: www.aauw.org/member_center/forms/recordchange.cfm
The Association can use member contact information for internal communications and can also include it when renting the lists to affiliated and like-minded organizations. The current instructions provide for a check box on the form for
“do not solicit” that applies to internal communications, and say an e-mail or a phone call is needed to get off the list for external uses.
The webmaster reports that the e-mail would suffice for both internal and external, and that this will be “more user-friendly” when the new system is rolled out.
Audience: max
Severity: small?
Fiscal effect: no
Policy question: yes
Reported: yes (KW 10/05)
Link: www.aauw.org
The tag-line embedded in the graphic banner on the web site says “promoting education and equity for women and girls”. Shouldn’t it be “all women and girls?”
The 1995(?) convention struggled mightily over a proposal to shorten the mission to something more tractable, and ended up leaving it at
The American Association of University Women promotes equity for all women and girls, lifelong education, and positive societal change
However, since then various contractions have been used in a marketing context where a briefer statement was required. That said, the Director of Communications has agreed that the next version of the web site may very well use “all women and girls”.
Severity: moderate
Audience: moderate
Fiscal effect: no
Reported: yes, many times over the years
Link: ex: http://www.aauw.org/member_center/websites/index.cfm
The mailing list software that drives the Association hosted lists changed earlier this month. There was a posting on the discussion board asking for a “list of lists” to be posted, but that’s not happened yet. It would seem that having information posted on what lists exist and their subscription rules would help make sure the folks who *should* be on those lists actually know they exist and can so track down e-mail address snafus that keep them from receiving key information.
In particular, I made a request for more specific subscription information on the Webmgrs list (since that has been a list that is “open” to all those interested), and was told (on 10/4) that the instructions on the page noted above (which still reference the old list @elists.aauw.org) would be updated by 10/7.
Severity: minor
Audience: moderate
Fiscal effect: no
Reported: yes, on other forms, but not this one in particular
Link: ex: http://svc.aauw.org/join/value/cu_listing.cfm
This may be at the level of a pet peeve rather than a defect in the web site, but still…
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