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December is a great time to pause, reflect, and plan ahead. These exercises will help you enter 2026 with a clear, manageable plan for website content and accessibility. We’ll focus on small, realistic steps you can build into your regular workflow—no overhauls required.
By the end of this activity, you will:
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Identify 2–3 realistic accessibility goals for your website in 2026.
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Draft a simple seasonal content plan for the coming year.
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Know how to use past analytics to guide what content to focus on next.
Goal #1: Working towards Accessibility
Most LEANWI libraries have until April 2027 to become fully web accessibility compliant, so 2026 is a great time to set goals making content accessibility just another part of the workflow.
Steps to take:
Understand what it means to make content accessible.
Library staff review basic website accessibility trainings.
All staff:
Website managers:
- Understand the 5 Key Steps to Maintaining Accessible Website Content
- Review the 2025 Fall Accessibility Update
Practice accessibility skills
All staff
- Accessible Documents – Basics
- Using Styles to Create Headings in Microsoft Word
- (Optional, if you use Google Docs) Grackle Google Add-on
Website managers (basic):
Website managers (intermediate)
Website managers (advanced)
Activity: Setting Practical Accessibility Goals
Activity: Create your own library website accessibility objectives and timeline for 2026.
Examples of some practical accessibility objectives for 2026:
By the end of March 2026:
- all library staff will have reviewed website accessibility basics (links above).
- library website staff will have reviewed basic website accessibility terminology and skills, specifically alternative text and website headings (links above).
By the end of June 2026:
- all new images uploaded to the website will include alternative text (using ASU Image Accessibility Creator)
By the end of September 2026:
- all new documents added to the website will be non-PDF format; ideally accessible Word documents uploaded to SharePoint and linked on website.
By the end of December 2026:
- website managers will become familiar with the Website Accessibility Checker plugin (to be added to sites in 2026, documentation and training to come).
Goal #2: Planning & Scheduling Seasonal Content
Website workflow can be streamlined by developing a seasonal content flow to avoid recreating content and to pre-plan and schedule posts and updates.
Think in Seasons, Not Individual Posts
Common library content cycles:
- School year: story time, after-school programming
- Summer reading
- Events: Library card sign-up month, Banned Books Week, National Library Week
- Recurring events
- Holiday closures
Identify content that can be reused or lightly updated each year.
Content Planning Tools & Workflow
If you’re not using them already, review WordPress and Divi tools for scheduling posts.
Review Design and Writing Tools for your workflow. Remember to incorporate accessibility into the process:
- Include Alt Text in all images.
- Don’t (over)use images with large amounts of text
- Create posts and documents using proper heading structure
- Use Microsoft Word Styles to create accessible documents
Review website clean-up guide for removing unneeded content.
Activity: prepare seasonal and routine workflow
Activity: Create your own library seasonal website plan and timeline for 2026.
- List the seasonal activities/programs your library routinely promotes.
- Review last year’s content and:
- delete any items you do not plan to reuse.
- review alt text and accessibility for posts/calendar events/social media posts that could be reused.
- Review post scheduling tools (links above)
- Review writing and design tools (linked above)
Goal #3: Using Analytics to Guide Decisions
For higher-level strategic planning, analytics can be a key tool to seeing where to focus your time and energy on your website. Do a lot of people visit your Friends or Book Club page? Does your calendar get a lot of hits? Are people completely missing a great resource that could benefit from being featured more prominently on your home page?
Reminder you must request an account to be able to access the deep-dive Matomo Analytics.
Access your website stats
Basic website statistics can be found on your Connect Matomo Dashboard, accessed from the WordPess menu bar.
But for deeper, more granular data, you will want to explore your website analytics direct from Matomo. Once you have your login, review Website Analytics Basics and see what information jumps out at you from your website.
Activity: Stats to Look At
Activity: Stats to Look At
note: LEANWI websites were moved behind the Cloudflare firewall in July/August 2025. Statistics earlier in the year may have been influenced by AI scrapers and bot traffic.
Log into your account at https://analytics.iflsweb.org. Answer the following questions for July – December, 2025:
- What were the top devices used to access your website? Mobile vs. Desktop?
- What time of day/day of the week were the most visits?
- What were the top pages visited?
- What were the top entry pages? How did people come to your site?
- Where did users go after visiting your website?
- What was the top search engine used by people coming to your site?
- What else of interest jumps out to you? Do you have questions about what you are seeing?
Activity: Turning Numbers into Decisions
Activity: Turning Numbers into Decisions
Based on the review of web analytics in the first activity, are there changes you might consider in the way you approach your website work?
- Are your webpages being accessed by mobile devices? Have you reviewed how your website looks on a phone or tablet?
- Is there content that should be refreshed?
- Is there content buried on your site that should be made more visible?
- Are there clumsy transitions that could help a website visitor find information more easily?