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3. Site Mark-up

The NZ government agency web site Standards related to using site mark-up on web sites are:

3.1 Documents validate to published formal grammars

Documents, including any web page and/or form, validate to published formal grammars. For NZ government web sites these are:

  • HTML 4.01, Strict or Transitional
  • XHTML 1.0, Strict or Transitional
  • CSS, CSS1 or CSS2
  • RSS 1.0

Content produced after 1 April 2004 must publish and validate to the above stated grammars unless the following exception criteria qualify:

  • i. a document that the agency wishes to place on its web site, which is to be or has been produced outside of editorial control of the agency, and cannot be sourced in HTML (or XHTML), or
  • ii. a document that the agency wishes to place on its web site, which has all its content duplicated elsewhere within the same web site (where the duplicated content validates to the above stated grammars), or
  • iii. it is legitimately not feasible to be made directly accessible.

If content cannot qualify via the exceptions as stated above, an agency must apply for a formal exemption, and consider providing a service that will convert the content "on demand".

Notes:

  1. Documents qualifying via the exceptions to validating to the formal published grammars in cases i) and iii) must be assisted with a summary of the key points contained within the document (which itself must validate to the approved formal grammars), located such that the summary’s association with the document is unambiguous as to which document the summary pertains.
  2. Documents “legitimately not feasible to be made directly accessible” (as in case iii) of the exception criteria) would qualify as such by being deemed:
  4. Documents “made directly accessible” (as in case iii) of the exception criteria). Refer to standard 4.2 regarding the publishing of documents in the most accessible format.
  5. Selectors, properties and values that are defined in CSS2 must degrade gracefully (as defined in the Glossary of key concepts), in browsers that do not correctly interpret CSS2, or do so poorly.

Guide to this standard

Conversion of content produced before 1 April 2004 to HTML format is at the discretion of the Agency, subject to the criteria set out in paragraph 4 of the Cabinet Minute (03) 41/2B.

Ensure that:

  • Elements are closed properly.
  • Elements and content are laid out consistently.
  • A document title is provided in the HEAD section of the web page using the TITLE tag. For example, <title>Example title</title>. If an Agency uses the additional meta-tag instance of the document title, it must contain the same information. For example, <meta name="title" content="Example title">.

This standard covers the W3C WAI checkpoint 3.2 for NZ government agencies.

Related Standards

3.2 – Use elements to convey document structure and mark up lists properly

4.2 – Publish documents in the most accessible format possible

4.3 – Use of PDF documents

Related Recommendation(s)

4.1.4 - Create documents primarily in the valid formal grammars.

Rationale for this standard

  • The web was founded on Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) and HTTP, the protocol for its transport.
  • HTML 4.01 is likely to be the last revision of the HTML recommendation based on SGML. Future recommendations for structural mark-up for the web will be based on XML, providing a framework for the language to extend.
  • XHTML 1.0 is the first such recommendation based on XML. Some recent browsers support XML-based mark-up like XHTML, as well as the SGML-based HTML. It is likely over time that XML browsers will be the norm, but this is not the case at the time of writing.

3.2 Use elements to convey document structure and mark up lists properly

Use elements to convey document structure and use them according to specification. Mark up lists and list items properly.

Guide to this standard

  • HTML structural elements, such as H1 to H6, LI, OL, and UL, are used to denote document structure rather than custom styles.
  • HTML elements should not be used for formatting effects such as indentation.
  • Use HTML headers <h1>..<h6> in document order (i.e., not styling order).
  • The meaning of the page title should be clear out of context. An agency needs to clarify <h1>, <h2> heading tags for page or document titles.
    This not only assists with the consistent identification of documents on an agency web site, but ensures users of external search engine are presented with more appropriate results.
  • Items that are intended to be associated as a list are accordingly marked up as a list.
  • Titles should contain meaningful information in the first 60 characters.
  • Page titles have the same syntax consistently throughout the site.

Related Standards

3.3 – Do not use deprecated features of W3C technologies.

4.2 – Publish documents in the most accessible format possible

Related Recommendations

3.1.1 - Use appropriate mark-up language when it exists.

3.1.2 - Use W3C technologies when available.

This standard covers the W3C WAI checkpoints 3.5 and 3.6 for NZ government agencies.

Rationale for this standard

  • As stated by the Irish National Disability Authority "Many people navigate or skim through documents by reading the headings to get a feel for the structure and an overview of the content and scope of a document. Lists with a non-logical structure will confuse users who rely on screen readers. Also, some screen readers will read content assigned as a header in a different tone of voice to other content on the page"

3.3 Do not use deprecated features of W3C technologies

Guide to this standard

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is responsible for standardising Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, SVG, MathML. Deprecated features of these technologies are those that have been declared obsolete by the W3C, and will in time be phased out from devices that interpret them i.e., browsers.

This standard requires you to avoid deprecated features and to use recommended non-deprecated alternatives instead.

This standard covers the W3C WAI checkpoint 11.2 for NZ government agencies.

The following table shows deprecated elements:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/elements.html

The following table shows deprecated attributes:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/index/attributes.html

Note at the above sites, the elements and attributes are themselves hyperlinks. Selecting these will direct to the detail of the selected element or attribute. If deprecated, it will say so and suggest an appropriate alternative.

Rationale for this standard

  • Using deprecated features, e.g. deprecated HTML elements or attributes, will not stop the HTML validating against current doctypes. However, it will stop HTML validating against future doctypes in which the phasing out is complete. Avoiding deprecated HTML in the first place, prevents you from spending time and money down the track, fixing HTML that has now become obsolete, or ending up with accessibility issues because your HTML no longer validates.

3.4 Relative rather than absolute units

Use relative rather than absolute units in mark-up language attribute values and style sheet property values

Guide to this standard

Avoid fonts with sizing based on absolute units such as points (pt), pixels (px), centimeters (cm), millimeters (mm) and inches (in). Font sizes expressed as percentages (%) and “ems” (em) are preferred.

A base size font across the whole web site (for consistency) is recommended.

This standard covers the W3C WAI checkpoint 3.4 for NZ government agencies.

Rationale for this standard

People with visual disabilities may have difficulty reading text, or not be able to read text at all. If the cause of the reading difficulty is principally due to the user considering the text too small, most browsers will allow the enlargement of fonts. Some browsers enable scalable enlargement of the whole document (i.e. Opera). However, most browsers will more likely resize relatively-sized fonts than absolutely-sized fonts. Most browsers will attempt resizing with absolute fonts but the resulting web site pages will often end up with an undesired overlap of content upon enlargement.

This is detailed on the Irish National Disability Authority site:

http://accessit.nda.ie/it-accessibility-guidelines/web/guidelines/priority-2/2-6


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