2023 Fall Announcements

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is getting ready to release Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2, a minor update to the current 2.1 standard.

WCAG 2.2 adds needed guidance around keyboard focus indicators, dragging functionality, and authentication in webpages. The new guidelines also remove an outdated, no longer needed criterion.

Version 2.2 is slated to become the new standard before the end of 2023, pending final approvals or remaining issues. While the update isn't finalized, we can get a sense of what to expect and prepare our sites to meet these requirements on day one.

Review how Western is prepared to meet WCAG 2.2.

If you manage a WordPress site that is using the original Western theme you can now upgrade to Genesis 3.

This update aligns the look and feel of WordPress sites with other external facing web platforms, natively supports the WordPress block editor, and is more performant across all devices.

CampusWeb, a collection of web servers that have been managed for nearly two decades are being retired.

The services running on CampusWeb are being migrated to a variety of other solutions across the campus. If you have any questions about the migration please reach out to WebTech.

Able Player is now available for use and will become the default media player.

New Modules:

• Force User Logout
• Events Logger

Upgrades:

• MailChimp
• Group
• Admin Toolbar
• Drupal Core
• Metatag
• Entity Clone

In an effort to make the Western header and footer easier to add to systems across Western the web component code has been simplified.

Now you add javascript and HTML, no more standalone CSS.

If your site uses the Ashlar web components, make sure your code follows the new patterns.