What is RSS?
New on MCNY's homepage, right above the Today@MCNY announcements, you might have noticed a little box that says "RSS" – here's what it is and how you can benefit…
Most people have at least several sites that they check pretty regularly to get the most up-to-date information. But wouldn't it be preferable to have the latest news and features delivered directly to you, rather than having to click from site to site?
That's what RSS does. And now the MCNY website has it, so you can have the TODAY@MCNY section updates delivered right to you.
RSS enables you to see when sites, that you are interested in, have added new content. You can get the latest headlines and articles (or even audio files, photographs or video) in one place, as soon as they are published, without having to remember to visit each site every day.
Not all websites currently provide RSS, but it is growing rapidly in popularity. So, if you see the RSS icon 
and you are interested in getting this information on a daily basis, here's how to proceed:
- If you have a Yahoo account:
- Add a feed to Yahoo by going to My Yahoo! and clicking "Add content";
- Go to the Find Section on the top of the page, type in "Metropolitan College of New York" (or whatever RSS you want to receive) and then click "Find";
- Click "Add" next to the content you want to add.
You can also add content by clicking on the "+ My Yahoo!" button on your favorite blog and e-mails. This will automatically add the feed to "My Yahoo!"
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Besides Yahoo!, there are many more feed readers out there. Bloglines, Google, Newsgator, and MSN are a few sites that bring your feeds to read in one glance. You may also find an XML button (similar to the RSS button on our site). When you click on the button, it will show you the content in XML (extensible markup language) format. One can copy and paste the URL into their feed reader of choice for the content to be picked up. A blog publisher may also choose to have a simple "XML" link, in which one would click on the link and also copy and paste the URL into a feed reader.
No matter what your feed reader of choice or what feeds you are subscribed to, this should definitely help you to save time and to easily consolidate, scan and read the information you want to read.
Web Accessibility:
MCNY improves www.mcny.edu for persons with different capabilities.
The Web is an increasingly important resource for many aspects of life: education, employment, government, commerce, healthcare, recreation, and more. But the very nature of The Web creates certain challenges for blind users, low vision users, people with limited hand dexterity, as well as others with different capabilities.
A blind person surfing the Internet will most likely use very much the same computer as someone who is sighted. The basic personal computer is supplemented by technology called screen access software, which translates information on the screen into synthesized speech or Braille.
We believe that it is essential that the Web be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to all people. As part of our institution's mission of social justice and improving the lives of others, we have made some important changes to MCNY's website so that our content is more accessible.
Some of the changes to the homepage were:
- Adding descriptive "alt" tags to all images – thereby enabling accessibility software to communicate what each image is;
- Incorporating table descriptions for tables that contain content - particularly the navigation tables. This enables a screen reader for the blind to describe the navigation area of a web page to a blind site visitor;
- Confirming that the page is human readable in non graphical browsers (like Lynx) that do not support images, JavaScript and CSS;
- Creating hyperlinks that offer clear, descriptive text so users know where they are going to be taken.
In terms of revisions to our homepage and accessibility issues, the most important page layout issues have been solved. The Internet Marketing and Development Team is working to continue to bring the site's internal pages up to the same standard.