Yesterday something minorly momentous happened. The SSC released the new set of web guidelines they and many others had been working on. While the draft had become popularly known as Version 3 (the last set released were Version 2.1), we now have a new name and the version count has been reset, introducing: Government Web Standards v 1.0
One of improvements made is best summed up by a paragraph from the press release:
There has been an emphasis on categorising requirements into standards that are measurable and testable and classifying as recommendations those that are still important but subjective in their measure or deemed not quite as critical as a standard.
People love things that are measurable and testable but it’s important to point out what makes something truely usable and accessible is not so easily quantifiable. It’s creative thinking and problem solving at each level of your agency and website, and there ain’t no checklist for that…
