Message sending: best practices

When sending a message on the system there are a few steps you can take to make sure that your messages are more accessible for members of the public.

 

Uploading images

The alert email editor does support images being copied and pasted into the images. However, this can cause an issue for some users, since some email clients can't display pasted in images, which will cause the images to display incorrectly, or not at all for a few users.

Therefore, it's best to insert images into an alert message, by making use of the system's image upload feature, which should make sure that these images are visible to all users.

When creating a message, you can upload an image by clicking on the image upload button:

Or from the select attachments button:

From there, you can upload an image, or click on an already uploaded image, to add it to the message.

Alternate text

Another good practice when sending an alert message is to make use of alt text for images. Alt text is a text alternative that should be used to describe an image. This is for visually impaired users, as this text can be read by text to speech software, which can then read the text, which should describe the message.

After an image has been inserted, if you click on it, a few options should appear below.

Clicking on the alt text button, pictured below, should allow you to insert the alternate text. If you click on the green tick button, that text should then be saved.

 

Uploading documents

The alert message does allow for the uploading of many different filetypes which can be included as message attachments. However, it's important to consider how these may affect the accessibility of the message. It's usually best to include most of the content of the message within the body of the message itself.

If most of the message is going to be included in an external document, it's still important to consider what file will be used. In terms of word processor documents, the alert system allows for the uploads of both PDFs and DOCX (Microsoft Word) files.

While Microsoft word documents (DOCX files) are popular, making use of PDF files is preferable for the purpose of accessibility. PDF files will display consistently across multiple devices. Furthermore they are viewable directly in most web browsers, and don't require the user to download the file and view it using proprietary software such as Microsoft Word.

DOCX files can be converted to PDFs using Microsoft word by changing the filetype from the save as screen.