WCAG 2.1 Compliance
We know that for many of you, accessibility is not just a legal requirement but an obsession. That’s why we’ve made dozens of changes throughout our product to support the updated WCAG 2.1 standard. We’re this close to the compliance tick of approval from Vision Australia.
This is a preemptive change in anticipation of WCAG 2.1 becoming the standard that government websites are held to. We strive to be one of the most accessible products in the world, and we’re doing this work now to help you serve all of your residents and stay ahead of evolving standards.
As we put the finishing touches on WCAG 2.1 compliance, why not get a refresher on making your own content accessible with the following guides:
- Accessibility helps local governments serve better
- Six tips on accessible government websites
- Should I use automated accessibility testing tools?
And help topics:
Publicize news, events and more with Related Content
Here’s something your content teams will love - automated related content. Now you can use fine-grained controls to automatically direct your residents to related pages whenever they view a news item, event, or a large range of other content. These links can be automated site-wide or per page.
Related content replaces the “previous” and “next” links at the bottom of some current pages.
Keep residents in the loop with cancelled events
We’ve added a cancelled option for event listings. Now if you cancel an event, it will remain in your event listings, maps, and calendars, but will be clearly marked “cancelled”. Visitors will no longer be able to add the event to their calendars.
Let your residents know why an event has been cancelled, direct them to rescheduled listings and more with additional information at the top of the event’s detail page.
Get help where you need it with our new widget
Use the "Help" icon in the corner of the OpenCities admin screen to open our all-new help widget.
We’ve always had a comprehensive help centre available to key staff in your organisation -- now that content is available to everyone with an OpenCities login. Use the search bar to find specific items, or browse the suggested topics to get contextual help based on where you are in the admin.
Just a quick note: navigating between topics in the help widget will take you to our help centre login page for the full article. If you don't have a login and would like one, reach out to our support team.
Sign on across multiple sites with Azure AD
Some of you are running multiple password protected subsites, such as Intranets and councillor portals. Now you can configure a single Azure AD login for users across all of these sites, as well as your OpenCities backend.
See set up the Azure AD connector for more information.
And finally, a quick note for developers
We’re going to be giving Top Tasks some love in our next release. (Watch this space). Our changes will include how we refer to the “top tasks” content type.
We’ve had a look under the hood and can see that none of you are currently running custom middleware to automate top tasks. That said, we think it’s a good idea to always let you know when we make changes that can affect your custom code. If you’re thinking of writing middleware that speaks to top tasks in the next couple of months, drop us a line and we’ll talk you through our changes.