Government Chief Information Office Developing Your Web Site Issue No: V1.0 Reviewed June 2006 Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................5 1.1 GUIDING PRINCIPLES.............................................................................................5 2. PREPARING SITE CONTENT...........................................................................6 2.1 CONTENT MANAGEMENT........................................................................................6 2.2 STRUCTURING CONTENT.........................................................................................6 2.3 WRITING FOR THE WEB..........................................................................................7 2.4 PRESENTING LONG DOCUMENTS.............................................................................9 2.5 LEGAL REQUIREMENTS AND STATEMENTS..............................................................10 3. WEB SITE DESIGN............................................................................................11 3.1 INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE...............................................................................11 3.2 NAVIGATION SYSTEM...........................................................................................12 3.3 VISUAL APPEARANCE...........................................................................................13 3.4 TEMPLATES AND STYLE GUIDES............................................................................14 4. IMPORTANT SITE ELEMENTS...............................................................................15 4.1 HOMEPAGE.........................................................................................................15 4.2 ORGANISATIONAL BANNER...................................................................................16 4.3 ABOUT US..........................................................................................................16 4.4 OUR SERVICES....................................................................................................17 4.5 PUBLICATIONS....................................................................................................17 4.6 WHAT’S NEW.......................................................................................................17 4.7 MESSAGE FROM THE MINISTER.............................................................................18 4.8 FEEDBACK..........................................................................................................18 4.9 LINKS OF INTEREST..............................................................................................18 4.10 WHAT TO INCLUDE ON ALL PAGES.........................................................................19 5. WEB SITE DEVELOPMENT............................................................................19 5.1 WEB STANDARDS................................................................................................19 5.2 PAGE SIZE...........................................................................................................20 5.3 BROWSER COMPATIBILITY....................................................................................21 5.4 FONTS................................................................................................................21 5.5 GRAPHICS...........................................................................................................21 5.6 ONLINE FORMS....................................................................................................22 5.7 METADATA AND META TAGS...............................................................................23 5.8 SECURITY...........................................................................................................256. WEB SITE ACCESSIBILITY....................................................................................25 6.1 THE DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION ACT 1992..........................................................25 6.2 ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES..................................................................................26 6.3 MAKING YOUR WEB SITE ACCESSIBLE...................................................................27 6.4 ACCESSIBILITY RESOURCES.................................................................................28 6.5 ACCESSIBILITY TESTING TOOLS.............................................................................28 7. ACCESSIBILITY FOR PEOPLE FROM NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING BACKGROUND..........................................................................................................29 8. QUALITY ASSURANCE..........................................................................................30 8.2 PRE-LAUNCH TESTING..........................................................................................31 9. REFERENCES.....................................................................................................34 Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 5 1. Introduction This document provides guidance to NSW government agencies on the process of developing Web sites. It complements two other documents prepared by the Government Chief Information Office, Preparing Your Internet Strategy and Maintaining Your Web Site , and is supported by a range of information resources and quality assurance tools. 1.1 Guiding Principles Agencies should be guided by a number of key principles in their Web site initiatives: Service orientation All offerings on your Web site should provide a service to your customers. Customer focus Design your Web site from a customer perspective, rather than by agency structure. Government-wide perspective Take a government-wide perspective in the provision of information and services to the community. Understand that people within the community should not need to know the structure of government in order to access information and services. Sector context Be aware of agencies with related activities and look for opportunities for cross-agency initiatives to provide integrated information and services to community. Equity of access Provide access to the largest possible number of users across the various sections of the community. In addition to these guiding principles, agencies should be aware of Code of Conduct principles governing all NSW Public Sector officers in their delivery of services to the community. Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 6 Preparing Site Content It is important that your Web site presents an image that reflects the professional standards of the NSW Public Sector and complies with this government’s commitment to electronic service delivery. 1.2 Content Management The way a Web site is prepared can greatly influence how the content of the site will be maintained, who will be able to maintain it and the ease of maintenance. The ongoing costs of managing site content should be factored into the budget during the planning phase of a project. With medium to large sites, where content needs to be updated frequently, the cost of maintaining that content, either in-house or with external contractors, can be substantial. Often, a few more dollars spent during development can save thousands of dollars in site maintenance. An increasing number of Government agencies are now developing their Web sites in conjunction with a content management system (CMS). This makes it easier for people without specialised Web production skills to maintain content on the site. The lack of a formal process for communication between content authors and site developers, make it harder to monitor document versions and control the quality of the site. This situation can lead to considerable inefficiencies, particularly when content is being prepared within an agency but the site is being developed by outside contractors. Agencies should consider nominating a single representative to act as a conduit between content authors and site developers. All content should be “signed-off” by an editorial committee or manager before it is incorporated into site pages. 1.3 Structuring content Following are some general ideas for structuring your information and services: • Create separate pages for each different type of information resource or service. • Present links to related information resources on the same page (e.g. all press releases listed on one page, copies of agency newsletters on another page, etc) so that they can be accessed from the ServiceNSW Web site. (www.nsw.gov.au) Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 7 • • • Ensure that the title and referring link labels of each information resource or service are the same and sufficiently descriptive to be meaningful when presented on their own (ie they don’t require any contextual information). • With long documents, consider presenting the information in a summarised version first, with text links leading to deeper or more detailed levels of information. This will allow your visitors to access the level of information that most meets their needs. 1.4 Writing for the Web The content of most government agency Web site pages is comprised of words. A few pages maybe made up of maps or other images, but most will be text-based documents and in nearly all these situations, content authors and not the site developers write the words they contain. In general, it is far easier to write and correct words with a word-processing program such as Microsoft Word, than it is to do when preparing a Web (HTML) page. Web page content should be drafted, checked for spelling mistakes, accuracy and currency (for example phone numbers) and then corrected by the content authors before it is delivered to the site developers or placed onto the site with a content management system. Writing for the Web is different to writing for other media such as print or television. Most people find text on Web sites relatively more difficult to read. The following guidelines will enhance the readability of Web page content: • Be succinct: write no more than 50% of the text you would have used in a hardcopy publication. • Use the ‘inverted pyramid’ style, starting with the conclusion. • Present one idea per paragraph. • Use meaningful headings and subheadings. • Highlight key words. • Use bulleted (unordered) and numbered (ordered) lists. • Use hypertext links to split up long information into multiple pages. Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 8 For more information see: • Web Page Content and Layout (http://www.gcrio.nsw.gov.au/pages.asp?CAT=805&!D=992) • Be succinct: Writing for the Web at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html • Editorial Style at http://www.webstyleguide.com/style/• • Effective Web Writing at http://www.webtechniques.com/archives/2001/02/kilian/1.4.1 Language • Present your information so that it is logical and relevant. • Use plain, uncomplicated sentence and paragraph structures for easy reading. • Use punctuation correctly to establish clear meaning. • Expand acronyms and abbreviations on first use. • Use the correct word and English Australian spelling. Proof read text rather than relying solely on spell-checkers. • Avoid the use of vulgarisms and other socially offensive language. • Use non-discriminatory language, taking care not to cause offence to any section of the community. • Minimise the use of jargon and colloquialisms. 1.4.2 Using hyperlinks in documents • Support the use of acronyms and technical terms in page content by providing hyperlinks to appropriate definitions in a supporting document. • Provide definitions or explanations of complex concepts and terms using hyperlinks. For example, in a site glossary. • Don’t underline text that is not a link. • Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 9 • 1.4.3 Readability Tests Readability tests measure those features of a text that can be analysed mathematically, for example the average number of words in a sentence or the number of syllables in the words. The results are used to indicate how easy or difficult a document is to read and usually provide an estimate of the reading grade or age required to understand the content. The different readability formulas however, cannot measure how comprehensible a document is and so will not tell us if an individual will be able to understand the ideas it contains. In spite of this important limitation, readability tests can be a very useful tool for Web content developers. A variety of readability tests or formulas are available to help Web content developers determine the reading level of agency documents. These include the online Juicy Studio Readability Test . ( http://www.juicystudio.com/fog/) 1.5 Presenting long documents Long published documents are sometimes also made available on Agency Web sites. Many people find long Web pages hard to read on a computer screen. The following tips will help improve the usefulness of long documents: • Every publication should be tagged with metadata as described in the Metatags and Metadata section of this document. • Use publication templates to achieve consistency and facilitate developing and maintaining your electronic documents. • Facilitate navigation through a lengthy document by providing a table of contents with hyperlinks to sections of the document. • Provide a printable version of lengthy documents, with options to print the whole document or a section of the document. Wherever possible this should be done using CSS print, rather than preparing a separate print friendly version. • Provide the option to download very large documents for local viewing or printing. • • Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 10 • • Use an accessible format (html, rtf) for all publications and test them for accessibility before publishing. For publications such as Annual Reports that are presented as PDF files, provide an alternative accessible method of obtaining the information. For more information see PDF and Accessibility. (refer supporting documents list) Where it is not cost effective to publish a document electronically (eg. a long document that is rarely used), provide an online summary of the document to inform users of its existence. This will enable the document to be found by search engines and it will allow your customers to ascertain whether they wish to pursue further information. 1.6 Legal requirements and statements Agencies are responsible for all information presented on the Web and must ensure adherence to all Government requirements with respect to: • Liabilities • Copyright • Offensive content • Privacy • Confidentiality • Quality of Information • Defamation • Advertising and Sponsorship For information see Website Legal Requirements and Statements (LINK) The Web site of every agency should include the following: • A privacy statement. • A copyright notice. • A legal disclaimer. Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 11 Web Site Design Government Agencies exist to provide information and services to meet the needs of the community. To facilitate access to and use of these services, design your site from the perspective of your customers. The web design process has four main components: • Information architecture: developing a structure for your information and services. • Navigation system: developing a system to help users find what they want on the site easily. • Visual appearance: developing the ‘look and feel’ of the site. • Templates and style guides: establishing consistent design elements, templates and styles, and documenting these in a Style Guide. 1.7 Information architecture Information Architecture refers to how you organise the content of your Web site. Some organisations make the mistake of using their corporate structure as a metaphor or template for structuring their Web site information and services. Your corporate structure does not necessarily reflect how your customers use or think about your information or services. The key to working out how to structure your information and services is customer focus: Envisage your customer’s requirements from their point of view, and design your information architecture to meet those needs. Don’t forget to consider all your users, since different types of users may have different requirements. The Government Chief Information Office publication, Preparing Your Internet Strategy contains information that will help agencies identify the services their customers might require and the most effective way of meeting their needs. It is often cost-effective to test the proposed grouping or hierarchical organisation of information on a site before commencing the development of site pages. This process is sometimes referred to as Front Page or Global (or Top-level) Navigation Testing. The process of Global Navigation Testing can help confirm the validity of the suggested location for information resources on the site and the navigation Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 12 labels used to identify those resources. When designing your site structure, consider how to present meaningful links on the NSW government portal (www.nsw.gov.au), to ensure you reach the widest audience. 1.8 Navigation system Signboards, directories and similar way-finding aids are provided to help people visit agency offices. Agency Web sites should incorporate effective navigation so that users can easily locate the information or service they require on the site. You can support users in finding the information by: • Categorising information from the perspective of your customers. • Providing a navigation system that reflects the structure of the site. • Ensuring navigation elements and menus are used consistently and are in the same position on each page (with the possible exception of the Home page). • Providing navigation labels that are short and use clear everyday language. • Ensuring navigation labels and links match the headings of the pages they refer to. • Providing alternative ways of presenting the structure of the site, for example a site map or index (see below). • Providing a well-indexed search facility where possible, allowing your users to find an information resource or service by entering key words or phrases. For more information about designing Web site navigation see: • Website Navigation (http://www.gcio.nsw.gov.au/pages.asp?CAT=805&ID=992#Navigaion) • Accessible Navigation (refer supporting documents list) 1.8.1 Table of Contents, Indexes and Site maps Tables of Content, Indexes and Site Maps can provide alternative access to the information on a Web site. They should not be used to compensate for a Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 13 poor structure or navigation scheme. A strongly hierarchical structure lends itself to a Table of Contents. Whereas, an Index is often more appropriate for a Web site without a strong hierarchical structure Site maps are strictly speaking a graphical representation of the Web site. A site map should provide an overview of the hierarchal structure of the site enabling a user to see the location of each page on a site in relation to all other pages. 1.8.2 Search engine A well-indexed search facility will allow users to find information on a site by entering key words or phrases. Great care should be taken when designing or choosing a search engine. Poorly designed search input components and incomplete index databases can make it very difficult, if not impossible, for users to obtain the results they want. This can often lead users to believing the material they seek is not available on a site when in fact it is. 1.9 Visual appearance Agencies should aim to develop a cohesive and consistent look for their Web site. This will help establish a unique identity for the site and assist site navigation and information retrieval. The Web is built on the model of pages, with each individual page contributing to the overall quality and effectiveness of the site. When developing the “look and feel” for a site consideration should be given to: • How the positioning of different elements on the Web page will be controlled. Developers should consider using advanced Style Sheets (CSS 2) rather than layout tables for this purpose. • Effective use of the screen real estate to help users quickly obtain the information or services they require. • Ensuring the font style (face) and size for headings and text are easy to read with the default browser settings and are used consistently. • Avoiding wherever possible the use of Frames. For more information see Web Page Content and Layout (http://www.gcio.nsw.gov.au/pages.asp?CAT=805&ID=992#Content) Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 14 1.9.1 Site colours Colours are often used to signify a corporate brand or Agency identity, for example blue and the police. Colour can also be a key element in helping users interpret information and navigate around a site. When colour is used, the pages must remain accessible for people with colour vision deficiencies. When selecting colours for your site, consider the following points: • Make sure the difference between foreground (text) colour and background colour is sufficient. • Avoid the use of textured or tiled backgrounds as they can make pages slow to download and reduce the readability of text on the page. • Accommodate people who have difficulty distinguishing between certain colours, by avoiding the use of red and green together and • ensuring text and background colours vary in tone so the text can be read in greyscale. • When using non-default link colours, ensure links remain visible against the background when link colour specifications are disabled or not supported. The following sites can be used to test the appropriateness of colour combinations; • Colour Contrast Analyser provided by Juicy Studio can be used to determine if there is sufficient difference between foreground and background colours. http://www.juicystudio.com/services/colourcontrast.asp • Vischeck provides an online service that can be used to simulate different colour vision impairments. http://www.vischeck.com/1.10 Templates and style guides Many Web sites are now produced using templates and/or databases to publish the Web pages. This process may also incorporate a Content Management System (CMS) that will allow people without Web development skills to put information onto the site. This can be a cost-effective approach to developing and maintaining your site. Templates will give you a consistency in design and navigation that will benefit your users and make your web publishing faster and more efficient. Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 15 Agencies should ensure the templates for each page: • Use appropriate mark up language with the proper structural elements. • Validate to published formal grammars (eg HTML 4.01 Strict, or XHTML 1.0 Transitional). • Have meaningful titles. • Meet the required level of accessibility. Create a Style Guide for your site to be used by content authors and web developers within the agency as well as outside consultants who contribute to the site. This will need to be updated as your Web site and styles develop to accommodate different types of information. Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to control text and link font style, size and colour. Consideration should also be given to the use of more advanced style sheet elements for the control of page layout. For more information on using Cascading Style Sheets see: • W3C Cascading Style Sheets Home Page at http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/• Eric Meyer CSS Work at http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/• Max Design CSS information and tutorials at http://css.maxdesign.com.au/• CSS Zen Garden which explores the boundaries of CSS at http://www.csszengarden.com/Important Site Elements Electronic delivery of government services is a keystone of the NSW Government’s vision of on-line, integrated government. Your Web site should list all services provided by your agency and facilitate access to each service with effective site navigation. 1.11 Homepage The front page of your Web site, together with the NSW Government portal ServiceNSW (www.nsw.gov.au), is the entry point to your agency. The Homepage should: Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 16 • Welcome visitors to your Web site. • Identify your agency, its role in government and the community, and provide an overview of its activities. • Showcase the services (including products) offered by your agency. • Provide a pathway to other areas of your site. • Provide easy access to copyright/usage and privacy statements and disclaimer information. (Often at the bottom of each page) • Provide a link to email the Web coordinator, so people can easily report problems (e.g. inaccurate or out-of-date information, missing links etc). • Include the words, “Other NSW Government Services “ or NSW crest with a link to ServiceNSW (www.nsw.gov.au) 1.12 Organisational banner The banner acts as a flagship for your site and should be placed at the top of the Homepage. It should clearly identify your site as part of the NSW Government and be made up of the following: • State crest and/or the words ‘New South Wales Government’. • Agency name. • Agency logo and/or motto. 1.13 About Us Provide an overview of the agency that will be useful for members of the NSW community, agency employees, other agencies, and overseas visitors. Include: • Location information such as head and branch offices, preferably supported by street maps. • Contact details for head and branch offices (contact person, telephone number, fax number, email address, business address, postal address). Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 17 1.14 Our Services Agency sites often contain a large amount of information about resources and online services. For each service area: • Provide details of the service and indicate where the service is only applicable to a specific client group. • If eligibility is limited, clarify eligibility for services by specifying application criteria. • Provide instructions on how to obtain the service, including forms to be submitted online or that may be downloaded for submission using conventional means of mail or fax. • Provide information on the location of ‘over the counter’ services, preferably supported by street maps. • Provide contact details (contact person, telephone number, fax number, email address, business address, postal address) as appropriate. • Provide an online customer feedback facility for your customers to report service problems. 1.15 Publications Provide an index of all documents published by your agency for the benefit of the community and other public sector agencies. These documents would include: Annual Reports, Policies, Guidelines, Regulations, Procedures, Memoranda, Circulars, White Papers, Discussion Papers and any other information resource in the public domain that your agency is responsible for. 1.16 What’s new Highlight what is new on your site (eg. new services, publications, etc). 1.16.1 Coming events Inform your visitors of any forthcoming events associated with your agency. 1.16.2 Media releases/stop press Provide online access to any media communication released by your agency, using an index structured so that the most recent releases appear Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 18 first. Publish any urgent or important communication (eg. important announcement, important notice, release of White Paper, launch of an initiative, etc) relevant to the community or other agencies. 1.17 Message from the Minister Your Web site is an opportunity for your Minister to address the stakeholders of your agency, so include provision for a message from the Minister responsible for your agency, addressed to the community 1.18 Feedback Provide a feedback mechanism to enable your visitors to ask questions or seek further information concerning your Web site and your agency. Ensure that customer reports are satisfactorily resolved and responded to in a timely and professional manner. Care should be taken with unmediated forums, such as chatrooms. These hold some liability risk and information provided in online feedback may be defined as Personal Information under the PPIP Act with Copyright held by the author. 1.19 Links of interest Provide links to related sites, that is, sites with similar and related activities to your agency. Before creating the link, notify the owners of these sites of your intention, as a matter of courtesy and as means of obtaining an agreement that they will inform you of any changes to site addresses. Consider categorising links so that you distinguish between government and non-government Web sites. Care should be taken to ensure the provision of a link to a non-government Web site does not give users the impression that you endorse the information, views, products or services provided by that site. Agencies using framed Web sites need to be mindful that linking to other Web sites in such a way that the linked Web page is viewed within the agency’s frameset may constitute a copyright infringement and should be avoided. Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 19 1.20 What to include on all pages All web pages should include: • Name of the agency providing the information or service. • Meaningful title of the information resource or service provided on the page. • Link to copyright/usage statement. • Link to disclaimer. • Link to privacy statement. • Date of last update. • Link to agency Homepage. Web Site Development During site development, agency Web project managers should encourage developers to adopt an iterative approach to site development that involves the ongoing testing and refinement of site elements as they are prepared. This approach allows potential problems to be identified early in the development process when they are relatively easy and cheap to correct. 1.21 Web standards Agency sites should use Web technologies according to specifications and should avoid deprecated features of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) technologies. • All pages should be marked up with the proper structural elements and developers should strive to control presentation with style sheets rather than with other presentational elements and attributes. • The content of Web pages is more accessible when it is presented with meaningful headings and subheadings. The tag should be used for headings and subheadings, rather than font commands. • The appropriate use of ordered

, unordered
and definition

lists are an established and effective way of highlighting content in the web environment. Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 20 • The DOCTYPE tag, which indicates the document type that applies, should be the first line of code for each page. Information about Document Type Definition (DTD) can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/sgml/dtd.html • The HTML tag should declare the primary language for each Web page with the ‘lang’ attribute. For example for English. • The character set (CHARSET) declaration should also be included in the section of each page. Browsers use the Doctype, HTML and Charset information to determine what HTML/XHTML standard and language to apply to the page. This will become increasingly important in the future. All pages on the site should validate to published formal grammars. A variety of on-line tools can be used to validate Web pages, including: • HTML Validator (W3C) at http://validator.w3.org • WDG HTML Validator at http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/• W3C CSS Validation Service at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/It is very important to identify validation problems early in the process of developing site templates, style sheets and Web pages so that they can be rectified before they are duplicated throughout the site. 1.22 Page size The time it takes a Web page to load depends on the total of the sizes of all the files (text, image, audio etc) that are required by the user’s browser to construct the page. It is preferable for pages not to exceed 60 kilobytes (kb) in total size. With larger pages, consideration should be given to splitting the page in two, or providing large images on separate pages with small thumbnails (links) of the images on the content page. Users want Homepages to load quickly, preferably in less than 10 seconds. Ideally the Homepage should be less than 40 kilobytes in size since this will ensure that in most circumstances its load time will be less than 10 seconds with a 56kbps modem. Many Web users in rural areas connect to the Internet at speeds of 19.6kbps or less. Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 21 1.23 Browser compatibility There are many different Web browsers and while it would be desirable for a Web site to work with all browsers this is clearly not very likely or practical. Web sites however, should operate with all W3C standards compliant browsers and should be checked with the major graphic-based browsers currently in use. Web pages should function fully with versions of common browsers that are one generation earlier than the current version. Although the appearance of site pages maybe degraded with some other browsers and browser versions, the page content and navigation should remain accessible. Web pages should also be usable with text-only browsers such as Lynx, which can be obtained from Lynx Browser download (http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/lynxport.htm) Text-only browser compatibly can also be tested for with the Delorie Lynx Viewer (http://www.delorie.com/web/lynxview.html) 1.24 Fonts Use true type fonts as they scale and present well both on screen and hardcopy. Select font types (such as Times New Roman or Arial) and font sizes that make it easy to read the text on your pages. Keep in mind that the browser will ultimately determine how the text appears on screen. While serif fonts like Times New Roman are better for printed text, it appears that sans-serif fonts such as Verdana and Arial are easier to read on the screen. Go to: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm Control font style, size and colour with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS1) rather than the tag. The accessibility of a site is enhanced by the use of relative rather than absolute values to determine font size. 1.25 Graphics Graphics on Web site pages should benefit users of the site. Avoid graphics that make the Web site so slow to load that your visitors leave in frustration. Remember that some users, particularly in rural and regional areas, may have slow modem speeds. Generally, photographic images should be in JPEG format, with adequate Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 22 compression to achieve minimum file sizes without losing quality; while line art images and flat colour images should be in GIF format, similarly compressed. Interlace large GIF images so that the image is gradually loaded at increasingly higher resolution. This allows the user to view the image initially in ‘rough’ form without waiting for the full image to be loaded Consider the following general points: • Graphics can improve the visual attractiveness of a site but they do increase the time it takes for pages to load. • Graphics in place of text should generally be limited to the agency logo and to depicting a key service or message. • Images should not be used in place of text for headings and navigation labels. • Specify the (img) ‘width’ and ‘height’ attributes of all images. • An appropriate ‘alt’ tag should be provided for all images. • Animated images slow down Web pages and should be used sparingly. For example, to highlight the key focus of the sites. • When using a Flash introduction page, provide a ‘Skip Introduction’ option outside the Flash object. • Provide an accessible alternative for all Flash elements on a site. • Avoid using blinking, scrolling or flashing objects or pages. For information on ensuring the accessibility of images see Accessible Equivalents for Images (refer supporting documents list) 1.26 Online forms HTML forms are now a common feature on many Government Web sites. Increasingly Web users are using forms to undertake a variety of online transactions including, registrations, ordering documents, making payments and participating in education and training courses. Some Web users find forms very frustrating and see them as a potential threat to their privacy. Form pages should describe why the information is being sought and the benefits users will gain from supplying the information. There should also be a clear Privacy Statement or prominent link to a Privacy page. Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 23 All conditions that may apply to a form and all the information the user will require to make decisions when completing the form should be clearly identified on the web page immediately prior to the form. Forms should be kept as short as possible. When a long form is required, provide users with an indication of how long it is likely to take to fill it in. Indicate clearly which form fields are mandatory (ie must be completed) and make sure all the form fields are easy to identify and complete. Agency Web site forms must be accessible since the ability to do transactions online can be of a great benefit to people with disabilities. For more information see Accessible Forms. (refer supporting documents list) Not all browsers support online forms, so an alternative means of obtaining information or assistance should also be provided, for example a telephone or fax number or email address. 1.27 Metadata and META tags 1.27.1 Metadata Metadata is descriptive information about a resource. For the Internet, it provides details about the content of Web sites and Web pages, primarily with a view to help people discover a resource. There are a number of different metadata standards available for different sectors, including: • Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) (http://www.naa.gov.au/recordkeeping/gov_online/agls/metadata_element_set.html) for government resources • Australia New Zealand Land Information Council metadata standard (ANZMETA) for geographic resources • Education Network Australia (EdNA) for educational resources. Government Chief Information Office (GCIO) strongly recommends using the AGLS metadata standard for improving the visibility and accessibility of their services and information, over the Internet. AGLS is a set of 19 descriptive elements. The 5 mandatory elements are: creator, title, date, subject or function, identifier or availability. AGLS is based on the Dublin Core (DC) international metadata standard for Web resources. The NSW AGLS Metadata Guideline (http://www.gcio.nsw.gov.au/content/2.3.34.AGLS.asp) gives more Developing Your Web Site V1.0 Page 24 information on AGLS and advice on how to implement it in NSW Government. 1.27.2 META tags META tags are HTML-compliant fields that can be used to describe a wide set of details about a web-based resource ie they can be used to encode metadata in Web resources. The tags can be created using a content management system, a specialised metadata tool or crafted by hand. Many search engines are designed to collect the metadata encoded in META tags in each page and thus increase the probability that your information resources and services will be found. Therefore, use HTML META elements to include appropriate metadata in the section of each Web page. • By convention, the HTML tag