Web Standards Overview

The New Zealand Government Web Standards comprise four separate sections: Strategy and Operations, Content and Design, Legal and Policy, and Technical.

Conceptually, it's useful to divide the Standards into the technical and the non-technical, as below.

Technical Standards: Directly from the W3C

The Technical Standards comprise:

1. the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 (level AA), and
2. a few standards specific to New Zealand, called the "New Zealand-specific requirements" (or "New Zealand layer" for short).

The New Zealand layer is not separate to WCAG 2.0, but rather modifies it for use in our government environment.

WCAG 2.0 is principles-based and represents a move away from "checkpoint accessibility".  Approaching accessible web development in this way is less technology-prescriptive and far more flexible, something that is vital in the fast-changing web.

For more detail about how the Technical Standards work, see Technical Standards Overview (Web guide).

Non-Technical Standards

Strategy and Operations, Content and Design, and Legal and Policy make up the remaining three sections of the Standards.

Strategy and Operations

• Web strategy
• Tendering and contracts

Content and Design

• Required Pages or Sections and Their Content
• Linking to Non-HTML Files
• Printing Web Pages

Legal and Policy

• Copyright
• Copyright of Third Parties
• Privacy Statement
• Disclaiming Content
• Terms of Use

The use of PDF and other non-HTML formats is handled in the New Zealand part of the Technical Standards (HTML alternatives are still required).

More Guidance

To better support quality government web development, the Standards are supported by a growing suite of web guides and links to useful resources.