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With links to literally hundreds of Local Authority sites we have become aware that many smaller authorities, like Town and Parish Councils, and a number of the larger ones may not be aware of the requirements defined in the Guidelines for UK Government Websites and the Framework for Local Government.
With permission of the Office of the e-Envoy we provide the following links to make the journey towards compliance with the above and easier one, especially for the smaller authorities. As we have already gone a fair way down the road of translating policy into practicality we take the liberty of summarising the gist of the legislation in a simple form for the benefit of the smaller authority.
In general the spirit of the guidelines is to achieve the following
It is however quite simple to achieve the requirement. The problem facing the large authority is the sheer scale of the task with hundreds, if not thousands, of pages to bring to compliance. They do have the benefit of larger budgets and skilled staff. The smaller authority does not have such vast resources at its disposal, but then again the task itself is much less daunting by way of scale.
Many authorities will already have access to the Guidelines for UK Government Websites but they can be read or down loaded by clicking on the link.
However if you wish to see what is expected, a semi-functional example is provided as the UK Government Website Start-up Kit. This has all the nuts and bolts that a smaller authority will need to either start from scratch or see what they need to do to their existing site to bring it up to standard.
As the states in the kit once you have used it, or amended the existing site, then it still has to comply with the following external standards
NOTE: Attention to detail is paramount a small error will cause any or all of the above verification processes to fail. That would mean that some users will not have the required access to the site. This will be a perpetual battle as nearly every alteration to the code causes a problem.
Adding the additional content required by the guidelines is quite straight forward, although time consuming. Remember at this point to add and verify functionality of the UK Government Access Keys. An explanation of these is within the Start-up Kit but basically they allow users who cannot, or do not wish to, use a pointing device (mouse) to navigate the site.
Listed below is the recommended UK Government access keys standard: ( ©Crown Copyright 2001 )
S - Skip navigation
1 - Home page
2 - What's new
3 - Site map
4 - Search
5 - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
6 - Help
7 - Complaints procedure
8 - Terms and conditions
9 - Feedback form
0 - Access key details
Once all this has been done, that is the content is complete, it is time to add "metadata". At this point everyone runs away screaming, the only ones remaining probably don't know what "metadata" is!
It's really quite simple because we've all been using it for years but do not realise it. It goes something like this, you need a book, with pictures, about trains, steam trains, ones around the 1930's, but only British trains and it must be written in the English language. The "metadata" are all the words in bold type!
Why do this, so we can all find information. The statement above is what you would give to a Librarian and they would easily direct you to the correct place in the Library to find the book. Metadata allows you to find detailed information over the Internet.
Luckily one does not have to generate Dublin Core quality metadata for each page by hand simply submit the page URL to University of Bath's metadata generator and then fill in the gaps online.
We now have a website that has moved considerably along the road towards full compliance with the national requirements and is much easier to use by all members of the community.
Once again we are indebted for the Office of the e-Envoy for permission to provide these links, we are happy to share our experiences of attempting to achieve a similar standard. We look forward to linking to your site.
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