[LINK] Web standards

[Tom Worthington]

At 07:15  8/08/01 +1000, Bill D'Arcy wrote:
>A senior public servant in a state government department has asked me for 
>links to standards that she should be employing in site construction ...

For accessible, portable web design I suggest: CSS+WAG@QVGA  ;-)

The definitive source for government web site design should be "Guidelines 
for Commonwealth information published in electronic formats", but it has 
been a little neglected (and not followed) by its stewards at the 
Department of Finance: 
http://www.finance.gov.au/ausinfo/guidelines/guidelines%5Ffor%5Fcommonwealth%5Fin.html

The print orientated "Style manual for authors, editors and printers" is 
worthwhile for IT people coming from a non-publishing background: 
http://www.finance.gov.au/infoaccess/style_manual.html

The definitive reference for accessible web design is "Web Content 
Accessibility Guidelines 1.0", W3C Recommendation, 5-May-1999: 
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/

The case to scare your web designers with on accessible design is the SOCOG 
one: http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/bat2001.html

A preferred consultant to Government on this is, of course, myself: 
http://www.tomw.net.au/admin/rfo20005.html ;-)

Some assorted material:

* Website Design, For Information Technology Professionals, for Module M3: 
Internet, Intranet, and Document Systems (COMP3400/COMP6340), 7,8,14,15 May 
2001, ANU: http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/wd.html

* Electronic Document Management and the Digital Library for E-commerce: 
http://www.tomw.net.au/2001/edm.html

ps: CSS+WAG@QVGA: Use cascading style sheets (CSS) to produce a design 
which looks good but also implements the Web Content Accessibility 
Guidelines (WAG). Test the design is usable on a one quarter VGA screen 
(QVGA). This will encourage the designer to produce a web site which is 
portable, accessible and uncluttered.


Tom Worthington FACS tom.worthington@tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd ABN: 17 088 714 309
http://www.tomw.net.au PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617
Visiting Fellow, Computer Science, Australian National University
Publications Director & Past President, Australian Computer Society
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YXML? 31 July, Sydney: http://www.tomw.net.au/2000/yxml.html