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The group responsible for publishing the Ricker Report -- a student publication out of the School of Architecture -- is currently exploring ways to expand their publication formats and ensure that their content is accessible to a wider audience. At the moment, they publish primarily through Issuu and printed format, but are looking into additional platforms such as podcast distribution and other digital media formats. As they move in this direction, they would like to better understand the accessibility standards, tools, and available platforms.
As they work to make their content more accessible, they are particularly interested in discussing the following questions:
- When transitioning from print to digital media, how should a publication rethink the relationship between text, images, and interactive media?
- Are there examples of publications that successfully expanded from print into multimedia formats that they could learn from?
- What are the best platforms or content management systems for small editorial teams managing recurring publications?
- What workflows help ensure accessibility is built into the editorial process rather than added afterward?
- If they plan to document this process for other student publications, what kinds of data or evaluation methods would make the report most useful?
- What metrics should they track to evaluate whether their new media formats are actually improving accessibility and engagement?
Their goal is to make the Ricker Report as inclusive and accessible as possible while expanding its reach across different media. They welcome guidance and feedback on how best to proceed toward this goal.
About the Ricker Report
The Ricker Report is an award winning independent architecture publication produced by the students of the Illinois School of Architecture. Dating back to 1953, this publication is one of the first student run architectural publications. It originally began as the Ricker Notes, a student-run periodical that contained student work, articles, and news regarding the school. The title of the publication refers to Nathan Clifford Ricker, the first graduate of an architecture program in the United States.
For many years, the Ricker Report has existed solely as a printed publication. Entirely produced and managed by students, the team is now preparing to expand the publication across multiple media platforms. Each step in this transition will contribute to shaping the final product and redefining how the publication reaches its audience.
A key component of this transformation is the integration of images, graphics, and other visual elements to enhance how the content is communicated. In addition to expanding the format, the team is committed to documenting the entire process and producing a detailed report that can serve as a resource for other student publications considering similar transitions.
To support this shift, the team is seeking information, guidance, and technical support, particularly in the development of a new website. This initiative represents not only a change in medium but also an opportunity to establish new standards and workflows that will guide future editions and projects.
Here are examples of recent publications:
Meeting Notes
- Giorgio D'Attoma: Ricker Report is looking to be more inclusive and also adding more categories of media (e.g. audio, video)
- Bob Dignan: have you done research into other publications? Any inspirations or models?
- Several professional publications serve as inspiration
- Interested in learning more about accessibility, what it means to be accessible
- Wondering whether podcast might be most accessible?
- Keith Hays, Dena Strong, Michael McKelvey: Issuu is an—ahem—issue
- Does not expose the page content to the user; instead, it displays images of the document content. Users would need to download the publication in order to read it.
- Lateral page flip can be a trigger for people with vestibular disorders, and doesn't allow the animation to be disabled.
- As long as accessible PDF is available for download, you may be ok using Issuu since this isn't a University publication.
- Dena: Bryan Jonker created a flipbook alternative using a static site generator
- Courtney Fleeger wrote up this case study: Transforming a Print Report into an Inclusive Web Experience
- For the 2025 College of Education Impact Report, they used Foleon.
- Dick Detzner: the Illini Success 2024 - 2025 Annual Report was made in Drupal.
- Meenal Dobariya:
- Here are some examples of architecture collections and journals that now publish online:
- And a student publication 'Reporter’ builds momentum as a platform for student voices
- Giorgio: welcome resources or information about website building
- Dena: recommend Publish.Illinois.Edu
- Michael: University resources like Publish will be helpful if Illinois brand is ok for your publication
- Giorgio created a Shared Google Doc for suggestions, links, etc.
- Mark Templo: can help out with PDF remediation
- Michael, Keith, Dena: consider accessibility with workflow, set up correctly in InDesign; PDF needs to be accessible if being shared digitally (but not if only being printed)
- If distributed electronically (even if intended for print) it is best practice to make the file as accessible as possible.
- Can maintain most of look and feel in the InDesign/PDF workflow AND be accessible—main changes would likely be color contrast and visual information hierarchy/structure.
- Recommend learning how to adopt an accessible InDesign project workflow.
- See video series on accessible InDesign workflows that Keith did a couple of years ago in Illinois MediaSpace (a few years old, but a good starting point for learning how to consider your document setup and workflow):
- Looking at several past issues, adopting an accessible InDesign workflow should be very straightforward - consistent styles and clean layout help a lot
- May need to give more thought to sufficient color contrast. The following tools could help:
- Colour Contrast Analyzer (desktop program)
- WebAIM Color Contrast Checker (webpage, bookmarklet)
- Colour Contrast Checker (Chrome extension)
- Ensure you have appropriate export tags and the other InDesign tricks (see the videos) and you should be in good shape.
- Once you learn the workflow, it won’t even really take a lot of extra time.
- Keith is also available to answer questions.
- Emilie Cooper: background info on current workflow and outputs:
- Printed document
- Published to Issuu via FAA (see past Ricker Report editions on Issuu)
- Transcripts in Word documents
- Independent from University - not sure how it would work to go through University for website
- Dena: consider mobile view of content (PDF not great on mobile)
- Dena: I'm a fan of "make the content web accessible first and worry less about the exact recreation of a page that low vision people couldn't read if you recreated it too specifically"
- Danny Douglas: it may be relevant to mention that PDFs are also a dead-end for users and — therefore — are typically bad for SEO/AEO.
- Possible workaround: mention the site in the PDF, but still preferred to make content into webpages whenever possible.
- As a practice, it's best not to duplicate the content of the PDF if you still absolutely must link to the PDF.
- More on the PDF User Trap.
- Bob: given interview-based approach, makes sense to consider how to translate experience into different media - e.g. video could show visuals with audio narration
- Giorgio: interested in how to modify workflow to create accessible products
- Dena: if you would like to embed a podcast into a website with a transcript including images, we can do that while starting from your Word document.
- Dena: do you have audio from original interviews? Would it make sense to use their recordings for the audio?
- Giorgio: we record audio, but there’s some editing involved so it makes more sense for team members to speak the audio
- Dena: recommend keeping original voice as much as possible
- Michael: recommend listening to 99% Invisible podcast - great storytellers with a focus on design
- Bob: we have podcasting & audio equipment for recording; will reach out directly via email. Also recommend TED Radio Hour podcast.
- Bob: podcast makes sense, sounds like a whole new product, not just reading the report; need transcript
- Danny: should we maintain or remove stutters and verbal fillers on captions and transcripts?
- Dena: for captions, keeping them in is the standard approach for accessibility.
- Bob: transcripts can omit and “translate” elements of the audio. Captions are for video and tied to the timecode of the media, so must not omit anything.
- Bob: Also, it’s far easier to edit out disfluencies in an audio-only asset - which assuages the need to transcribe them. Here be dragons if you make someone sound unnatural or butcher the “feeling” of them.
- Keith: looking at past Ricker Report PDFs, it shouldn’t be hard to make the InDesign document accessible so the PDF is also accessible
- Keith: recommend gaining an understanding of accessibility principles and the "why," then going from there rather than other way around. Some helpful getting started resources:
- WebAIM - good foundational information about digital accessibility concepts
- Digital Accessibility website - University of Illinois' primary hub for digital accessibility information
- CITL's Accessibility Training Opportunities - targeted toward faculty, but much is relevant beyond faculty