26th Mar 2021
Did you know that we have Green Hosting badges for our clients to display on their websites?
If you are using our hosting service, go ahead and tell the world that you have chosen to power your site 100% by the wind!
We have a range of different sized badges and an option of full colour or grey and white. To use a badge, hop over to our support page and copy the code for the badge of your choice. If you would like some help then do get in touch with us through our helpdesk.
19th Feb 2021
Social media is pretty much a standard part of most businesses’ online marketing by now but users’ experience of it is far from standardised. This could be due to the content itself, how it's posted, or both. For people who have disabilities it may be difficult to access social media in many ways, which at best could be frustrating and at worst be a complete barrier.
With some forward planning and a few adjustments to the way we prepare and post, we could be providing a whole different and much more inclusive experience to many users.
This is a whistle-stop tour to highlight the different aspects of our social media posts we could (should) be making more accessible and inclusive. I'll say right now that we are learning too and will be implementing these things in our posts going forward.
At the end of this article I've added links to some really great guides and deeper information by the experts in this subject. There's a video from AbilityNet, which is very much worth a watch too.
Images are a big deal in our social media, especially in Instagram where it’s all about that engaging picture. For visitors who cannot see images, a useful and concise description is needed in the form of ‘Alt Text’.
Facebook creates automatically generated alt text, which you will need to check and edit, for Instagram and Twitter you can add alt text:
Editing alt text in Facebook
Adding alt text in Twitter
Adding alt text in Instagram
In some instances, alt text may not be sufficient to describe your image, especially if your image includes text (more about that below). In these situations you could add an image description into your post text or link through to the full information on your website.
For podcasts or audio-only content, a transcript should be included. If this isn’t possible within the post itself then you could provide a link to the full transcript wherever it is available online.
Transcripts can also be added to YouTube videos as can closed captions. Google provide useful guides on adding your own closed captions and creating a transcript file for YouTube videos.
Subtitles vs Captions?
Subtitles covey only the dialogue in the video and captions convey all of the essential audio (e.g. sound effects, music etc as well as dialogue). So you need to decide which will be most useful for the video you’re publishing.
AbilityNet have a great guide on this and adding captions to various platforms, which in the video is discussed at 26:50 and is on page 9 of the transcript document.
An audio description is useful for videos where visual content conveys meaning or information. However, you may be able to plan your video in advance so they’re not needed.
The W3C provide clarification on audio descriptions, when to use them and how to add them
Custom fonts
Custom fonts, which aren't included as standard on the social media platform can be difficult to read, due to the letter forms. Additionally, on social media custom fonts are are ignored by text readers and assistive technology. Using the fonts as provided means a better user experience and reduces the risk of your content not being read at all.
Text in images
If possible it's always best to avoid using text in images at all. However, it is a great way to make an impact, especially on Instagram. When using text in images, it is important to use a legible font that won't become illegible when zoomed to a much larger size. Also choose a simple or sans-serif font, where individual characters are easily distinguished. And importantly, ensure that the font colour and background colour contrast well so that the text is clear and strong. WebAim provide a very useful colour contrast checker which helps you easily choose highly contrasting colour combinations.
We can get a little carried away with hashtags sometimes, trying to hit as many key tags as possible. However, we need to take care about how we use them. Camel caps not only make hashtags much more legible but also allows text readers to distinguish individual words within the tag. To demonstrate camel case vs non-camel case, see the following:
#ThisIsCamelCase
#thisisnotcamelcase
Disability Rights Fund also advise putting hashtags in comments, separate from the post text. However others suggest hashtags within the post are OK if used in context within the sentence.
How we love an emoji to bring personality to our posts! However, for some people emojis can make the caption too ‘busy’ and difficult to read. They can also problems for those using text readers if used excessively and in the middle of sentences. This is because the text readers announce the name of the emoji and as you can imagine may make a post seem nonsensical. AbilityNet provide a brilliant example of this in their example video of emojis being read aloud (at 11:33).
This is a huge topic in itself and not as clear cut as making technical adjustments. However, two important things to be aware of are:
Here are some very useful resources which provide much more detail:
WebAim - People with Disabilities on the Web
Ability Net - How to Do Accessible Social Media (webinar and Q&As)
UK Government Communication Service - Planning, creating and publishing accessible social media campaigns
RNIB - Making Your Social Media Accessible
Disability Rights Fund - Creating Accessible Social Media for Those With DeafBlindness
Hootsuite - Inclusive Design for Social Media
W3C - Making Audio and Video Media Accessible
Emojipedia - See all of the different names of emojis
Self-Defined - A dictionary of words which may be not be inclusive
Gov.UK - Inclusive language: words to use and avoid when writing about disability
Stroke Association - Accessible Information Guidelines (Making information accessible for people with aphasia)
5th Feb 2021
Many of our clients use WordPress, it's an extremely popular platform allowing much flexibility and creativity, without requiring coding experience. Very often clients who want to use our hosting service have an existing WordPress website, which they want to keep, but prefer an enviromentally conscious host - that's us!
We understand that the idea of moving your website from one host to another can be incredibly daunting, so we offer a service that takes the work off your hands. We can transfer your existing WordPress website (and e-mails) from your current host or from wordpress.com (where WordPress itself is the host) over to us. This is done with the utmost care and minimal disruption to ensure everything switches quickly and safely.
Sian Conway from #EthicalHour
"I'm really impressed with the service I received from Green Hosting. I was nervous about moving my site over in case anything got lost or broken but they guided me through the whole process, answered all my questions in plain English and kept me updated at every stage. They handled the whole switch over for me and it went smoothly. Not only have they made my site more sustainable but it's actually much faster now too!"
Holly Rose
"You're a dream, thank you, best service I've ever had in my life from a hosting company!"
Laura Turner from Fuzzfox
"Thank you, I'm so happy to be powered by the wind now! So lovely to deal with real and wonderful people too who went above and beyond to make the whole process of switching a breeze (pun intended!)"
Sam Attard from Ethical Revolution
"Thank YOU for providing such a brilliant service! Honestly, before starting Ethical Revolution all those years ago I used to provide web solutions for businesses and so I have had plenty of experience of web hosts. Even without the amazing green credentials you guys are the best!"
If you're thinking of switching your WordPress website to us, feel free to drop us a line first so we can take talk it through, take a look at your website and get a good idea of what needs to be done. If you've already made your mind up that's great too - Go ahead and sign up for a hosting plan and let us know you'd like to switch.
The next step is to agree a good a day and time to do the work. We agree a mutual time so that we can be in contact with you during the transfer if we need to and ensure everything runs smoothly. We'll ask you to change some settings for your domain name, or we can do that for you too if you prefer. The transfer will be handled by us and we'll let you know when everything is complete.
The price starts at £25 for a website transfer and varies depending on whether you'd like to transfer e-mail accounts too and if you're coming from another host or wordpress.com. Get in touch with us and we can let you know the price for your transfer.
Because WordPress is such a hugely popular platform (with around 400 million users) it can be a rife target for exploitation from hackers. However, there are ways to boost your website's security by using a few techniques to make it difficult for them to gain access. We have a provided some guidance on how to add these security measures but if you'd like us to do it for you, that's no problem, just give us a shout.
If you don't already have a website but would like to have WordPress installed for you with the security features, then we can do that too.
Hop over to our Clients page to see who else is using Green Hosting and for some more lovely feedback about our service.
30th Oct 2020
Website owners and content creators are becoming more aware of the environmental impact of our digital lives. But what about the social impact? It’s not always about what you’re saying online that has implications, how you say it matters too. The reason for this is because not all web users have the same access to online information and resources. Low connection speeds, limited data allowances and disability can mean that some people are excluded from certain content. It is important to know if your content is helping or hindering.
Slow-loading websites which have not been optimised for efficiency and contain unnecessarily large photos, videos and files can cause problems for website visitors with low connection speeds and limited data. Working through all of those heavy web pages uses up data allowances and some visitors may run out of time or resources before they reach what they really need.
Accessibility and inclusion online are vital for disabled people. Some websites and website content can cause real problems for disabled website users and the assistive technology they might employ whilst online. It is now a legal requirement in the UK for public sector websites to be built and managed in a way that is accessible for disabled users. We have been building websites this way for many years (because why wait for the law to tell you not to discriminate?) and much of what is involved is technical. However, there are ways to manage and publish your website content that makes sure it is accessible to disabled people.
Be mindful of the things we post online. Take some time to learn about what it means to optimise your website and what makes it accessible or inaccessible to disabled people. There may be things that only your web designer can address but there are certainly ways in which you can manage other aspects, especially your content:
These are just a few examples of things all content creators, publishers and managers can do to support digital inclusion. Optimising a photograph may seem like a small thing to do, but like all actions of individuals, collectively they can make a huge difference. The best thing about these changes is that not only do they have social benefits but they have environmental ones too and they improve your SEO! Search engines much prefer quicker, well optimised, well structured websites. It’s a win-win situation all round.
There are wider and more complex details in the design and development of websites but these are for your web designer to address.
Below are some useful resources if you’d like to read up on these topics further:
Making the Web Accessible – The World Wide Web Consortium, Web Accessibility Initiative
ONS – Exploring the UKs digital divide
The Guardian - Digital divide 'isolates and endangers' millions of UK's poorest
GOV.UK - Making online public services accessible
Android Central - How much mobile data does streaming media use?
Wikipedia - List of countries by Internet connection speeds
8th Jan 2020
Awareness of sustainable lifestyle choices has thankfully now become part of the mainstream. We are extremely conscious of plastic pollution, unsustainable palm oil, switching to meat free meals and buying from zero waste shops. We take a lot of time to think about how choices and actions in our physical lives affect the planet and life upon it.
But what about our online lives? How often do we hear conversations or read articles in the mainstream about the pollution and waste created by the Internet? Not that often I would say. When I talk to people about the negative environmental effect the Internet has, they are often initially surprised that they haven’t considered this before. Consuming and posting content online is such a big part of our every day lives, how have we omitted to think of the power and resources needed to maintain it?
Probably because to us it’s invisible and intangible. It just works. We don’t see the energy required to power, maintain and cool the servers that store, process and deliver every single item of content that is posted online, or the 8 million global datacentres that house those servers.
Currently there are over 4 billion of us using the internet and according to We Are Social & Hootsuite there are on average more than a million new users coming online every day. Our internet use is consuming 3% of the world’s electricity supply and in 2015 totalled more than the whole of the UK’s consumption that year. This is continually growing at an extremely fast rate and experts predict that by 2030 the energy supply in Japan will be completely consumed by data centres.
That massive energy use doesn’t come without an environmental cost. Most data centres are powered by fossil fuel energy sources which means that the global carbon emissions of the world’s data centres now equal that of the aviation industry. The Shift Project also tell us that video watching alone (the hungriest of all online media) generated the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions as that produced by the whole of Spain in 2018.
In a world where we are trying hard to reduce our environmental impact in most areas our online lives seem to be going in the opposite direction.
According to Greenpeace there is much work to be done but there are some positives too. Since 2010 when they began documenting and reporting the demand for energy and resulting pollution caused by data centres some major internet companies have expressed their commitment to moving to 100% renewables. This has had the knock-on effect of utility companies in the US switching to renewables to meet customer demands and attract new investors.
So, how about your own website? You can make sure that is powered by renewable energy too by using Green Hosting. Switching to a hosting company that powers its servers and data centres with renewables means you are not only helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused by our online lives but you are also telling utility and data centre companies that Internet users want more clean energy. This is a great way to exercise your consumer power!
Our green website hosting is powered 100% by renewable energy, all year round. The Centro data centre, which houses our hosting servers, runs entirely on wind generated electricity from UK on-shore and off-shore wind farms. Because the energy is supplied via the grid, the power does not stop if the wind isn’t blowing, nor does it need to fall back on fossil fuels. It remains as reliable as ever and as green as always.
Centro data centre isn’t wasteful with that green energy either and has in fact achieved a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of 1.2, which is a very high efficiency rating. This is because it has been designed and built to use electricity as efficiently as possible. By extracting hot air from the building and using naturally cold outside air through the water-based chillers, the cooling systems do not need to be constantly at full power as they would in traditional data centres.
Our Green Hosting service provides all of the same, usual features you would expect from other hosting companies. So, if your website is hosted elsewhere we can help you switch to Green Hosting with minimal disruption.
“I'm really impressed with the service I received from Green Hosting. I was nervous about moving my site over in case anything got lost or broken but they guided me through the whole process, answered all my questions in plain English and kept me updated at every stage. They handled the whole switch over for me and it went smoothly. Not only have they made my site more sustainable but it's actually much faster now too!”
You can find out more about our Green Hosting service and see more lovely client comments at green-hosting.co.uk
What else can we do to make our online lives more sustainable?
There are other ways we can live more sustainably online, both via our own websites and elsewhere. We wrote an article about this for Zero Waste Week 2019, so do check it out.
There are lots of useful resources on this topic, some of which I used to gather the figures on internet use, data consumption and carbon emissions shown above. If you’d like to delve deeper here are the links:
We Are Social – Digital 2019: Global Internet Use Accelerates
Data Center Knowledge - The Data Center Dilemma: Is Our Data Destroying the Environment?
Information Age - A perfect storm: the environmental impact of data centres
Impakter - Hungry for Data, Starving the World
Independent - Global warming: Data centres to consume three times as much energy in next decade, experts warn
Nature - How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity
The Shift Project – The Unsustainable Use of Online Video
Greenpeace – Click Clean Report
Greenpeace – Clicking Clean Virginia
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