Just over a week ago I was given the result of all this hard work – a Master of Engineering in Computing with Upper Second Class Honours (a 2:1).  I’m absolutely amazed that I manged to get a 2:1, especially when you consider all the additional extra-curricular activities I’ve undertaken during the last few years (my freelance work, the waterfront, etc.).  Its been a really difficult 4 years, and I’m glad its finally finished, but it was definitely worth it!

Of course, this doesn’t mean I’m a graduate – for that I’ll have to wait for my degree ceremony on July 18th!

Since getting my results, we’ve all packed up and moved back to our respective homes.  I’ve spent the last few days helping everyone clear up the house to make room for the huge amount of stuff I’ve accumulated while living in Swansea (its amazing really how much stuff I have).

Today was the last day of freedom – tomorrow I start my job as a full time developer at a web design company in Cardiff.

Now that my time in education is finally over (and partially because we found this while tidying up the study at home), I thought it would be nice to look back at when I started school for the first time.  Below is a scan of the front cover of my very first school report from June 1991 (when I was just 4 years old).  Even back then I obviously knew that I wanted to work in IT!

Over the last few entries, I’ve looked at some of the websites used by county councils to provide details of the 2008 local elections. Some of these websites (mainly Monmouthshire County Council) were just plain irritating, whereas others were really easy to use, but didn’t provide enough information (Swansea). Cardiff’s site was somewhere in between.

Overall though, none of these sites provided the level of detail and usability required for the age of the Internet. It is becoming less and less acceptable for councils to avoid providing this information online.

It is, however, encouraging to note that the 3 councils I have covered actually provided live information online. A number of councils I looked at during election night did not provide information at all (for example Neath Port Talbot and Torfaen. What is even worse – and completely unacceptable – is Powys County Council, who still did not have results of their elections available 4 days after the election took place!

The next set of council elections in Wales take place in 2012, I sincerely hope that by then, every council gets its act together and produces live systems that not only comply with the UK’s accessibility laws, but are also easy to use and provide the level of detail expected.

Will this happen? I don’t know – we will have to wait and see.

Swansea City Council has taken a very different approach to that of Monmouthshire County for their live election results. When you visit their election site, you are presented with a graphical map of the county, showing each ward with different coloured dots indicating each seat available. As expected, the colour assigned to each dot shows the party which has secured that seat for the next four years –red for Labour, yellow for Liberal Democrat, black for independents etc. This allows the visitor to very quickly gain an overview of which party has won in each ward.

Further information can be gained by hovering over one of the dots (if you have JavaScript enabled) – which provides the name of the ward and the name of the elected representative. Clicking on a dot loads a page showing each of the candidates that stood for that constituency (ordered by the number of votes received). I feel that this is a much better way of displaying the results as it allows you to easily tell who has been elected (especially in wards where there are more than one seat available). It also helps those who know where they live, but not the name of the ward in which they are represented.

The only disappointment is that the ward information pages lack the details of spoilt ballots and number of registered electors. However, this is a very minor complaint and could easily be fixed next year.

From an accessibility point of view, I was initially concerned that the graphical map might pose a problem, however after inspecting the code, I discovered that it was developed using normal unordered lists, absolutely positioned on the page. While this is not an ideal solution, it far outweighs other options such as image maps and flash.

Turning off CSS shows just a normal list of linked wards leading to the full information page – proving that even when using a screen reader, users would still be able to find out what they wanted to know.
The site is let down by the lack of captions and summaries for the tables on the ward information pages. Using these captions is a must to comply with accessibility legislation. However, I am sure that this is an easy fix for next time.

Without a doubt, this is the best local election website I have used this year – it is easy to use, clear and provides a good level of detail. During my research, I was unable to find information about who developed the site for the council, leading me to believe that it was produced in-house – a fantastic achievement. However, I believe there are a number of improvements that could be made – firstly added accessibility, and secondly enhanced information about the results (e.g. spoilt votes, number of registered voters and possibly graphs of the results).

Rating:
Ease of use: 4/5 – Graphical map allows users to locate their area quickly and coloured dots provide a good overview of the current state of play.
Level of detail: 3/5 – Good level of information about each ward but let down by the lack of extras such as graphs and ‘meta’ information
Accessibility: 4/5 – A good attempt at accessibility. Turning off JavaScript and CSS does not break the site, however, it is let down by the lack of captions and summaries for tables and links.

Overall: 11/15

Been very busy the last few days.  Helped Charlie move out of her house on Sunday.  Took a while to clean, but I think we left it in a pretty good condition.

Had a meeting on Monday at Hereford Sixth Form with a company who wanted to set up an alumni website for the college.  Unfortunately the meeting didn’t go very well, and the costs were much more than the college can afford.  The final decision is yet to be made (and I won’t be involved in making it), but it was good to be able to get my views across to the marketing team.

Anyway, lots to do and many things to pack.  I’m starting work on Monday morning – working at the web development company again.  Will be interesting to see which projects I will be assigned to this time.

Today, a letter bomb exploded at the DVLA headquarters in Swansea, injuring one person. With this major story occurring within our primary catchment area and the possibility of student’s parents being involved in the incident, it was essential that the Waterfront publish something on their website. Andrew Gwilym, our editor put together a quick story and we posted it on our front page at about midday.

Within 10 minutes, it had appeared within the Google News index. This we expected. What we did not expect was for the article to be include alongside (and sometimes above) articles from major news sources such as Reuters, The Guardian and the BBC. For most of the afternoon, our article has been in the top 4 results for the keywords ‘DVLA’, ‘Swansea’ and ‘Letter bomb Swansea’. While this surprised us, we were even more amazed to discover that for a short period, we were also included on the Google News front page, sandwiched between Reuters UK, BBC, Bloomberg and Guardian Unlimited. For anyone who want’s to see this, I have taken a screenshot.

We are amazed at the level of visibility that our small article has been given. Our only explanation is that our new website is easy to navigate, contains a lot of content and is regularly updated so Google counts it as a good source of news. If anyone can offer us a good explanation, feel free to leave us a comment!

Dafydd Vaughan
Web Editor, Waterfront Online