Web Development Standards, Part 1

When you survey the net, it seems that anything goes when it comes to web design for business. Businesses and organisations choose flash visual content, or bold and bright colour schemes and fonts– whatever they feel will attract their targeted audience or represent their brand narrative. Yet, it may surprise you to know that as web design has evolved, a series of guidelines have been created and these aim to make all designs inclusive. In this blog, I want to start introducing to you the meaning of web development standards and why you need your school or education-related business website to follow these standards.

Too often web development standards are ignored or simply unknown by most web developers, private and public organisations alike and the public in general. While employed by the Department for Education (formerly known as DECD). I was fortunate to learn about web development standards, from an expert in the subject who was also working for the department at the time.

These standards have been created so we can build a service or a product that can be used by all users, user experience and testing must take special consideration. Web developers and organisations must include all members of the community when producing and developing sites.

The W3C , Vision Australia and The Digital Service Standard provide clear and complete guidelines for us, web developers and information technologists. The Digital Service Standard provides a clear and concise criteria to web accessibility.

When commissioning a new website either for a school or a business, these standards must be part of the development process. In subsequent blogs, I will describe why  web development standards are of extreme importance in particular for schools, and how web accessibility can improve enrolment numbers and even avoid legal issues.

Thank you Cliff.