It is a legal requirement to make all reasonable efforts to ensure that public services are accessible to everyone. In practice this means that public sector websites should comply with the Double A standard recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)* in its Website Content Accessibility Guidelines at www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag
Anyone using the Drupal ‘Website in a box’ product supplied by Healthwatch England (download this and lots of guidance from http://www.healthwatch.co.uk/website-in-a-box ) will automatically be following most of the accessibility guidelines, so you simply need to focus on these five golden rules:
Alt Text: when images are added to the site, ensure that text is included in the Alt Tag field to describe what is in the image. For example, use ‘Healthwatch England’s logo’ rather than just ‘logo’ or ‘a group of concerned patients at a meeting with doctors’ rather than just ‘people’.
Video and audio transcripts: always include a transcript with any video and audio content so that visually and hearing impaired users can access it. Videos should also have captions. (Note: YouTube can be synchronised automatically by using the transcripts file already created.) See our Video and Audio Guidance for more information.
Hyperlinks: give clear, specific instructions such as ‘Download our accessibility policy (PDF 2.1MB)’, rather than ‘click here’. Always complete the Title tag information when adding links to ensure your links are meaningfully described.
Colour: avoid using colour as the only visual means of conveying information, indicating an action, prompting a response, or distinguishing a visual element on a page. http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/Overview.phphttp://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/Overview.php
Page titles: ensure that web pages have titles that describe their topic or purpose – these are the first things that the visually impaired are presented with when using a ‘reader’ device. (This is also important for search engine optimisation.)
* The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the definitive authority for the code used to build websites. The consortium sets standards and provides an exhaustive code validation service to ensure that all websites have a consistent and homogenous code structure. Always make sure you’re compliant with the W3C standard.
Please check your site complies by using the online validation checker at http://validator.w3.org
Compliance with the universal W3C standards helps to ensure that online products are consistently and correctly displayed. It also helps ensure your web pages work efficiently for as many people, on as many different systems as possible. There are multiple browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Explorer, etc.) on multiple platforms (PC, Mac, Linux), with varying operating systems (Windows XP, 7, iOS Leopard, Lion, etc.), as well as a wide range of devices (desktops, mobiles, tablets, and so on). New variations and versions of all of the above are also constantly being released –fortunately, these are consistent with W3C standards.
You can check information and definitive guides for WC3 coding standards at http://www.w3.org/standards/
A note on Accessible documents
The documents that you upload to your site should also be accessible. The best format for them is as PDFs. To create an accessible PDF from a Word document make sure you follow these tips:
Structure your document – this means basically making your headers and subheaders using the Heading 1,2, 3 features in Word’s ‘Styles and Formatting’. You can create the style, font, size etc you want on the text, then select the text, select the pulldown arrow from the right hand side of the Heading in the ‘Styles and Formatting’ column and choose ‘Update to match selection’. Now every time you select a heading and apply Heading 2 for instance it will have the right formatting and screen readers will be able to work out the structure of your document.
Describe the meaning of any images, charts or other visual items within your document using the ‘Format picture’ feature, then choose ‘Web’ and add some ‘Alternative text’. If you have images that are there purely for decoration, consider removing them.
Never scan text documents and include as images. Always find the original and then convert the text document to PDF. If this is impossible, retype the document.
Don’t use tables for layout. If you need columns, use the column feature in Word. Only use tables for data that needs to be tabulated. Add information to table headings.
Remove footnotes as these make the reading process needlessly complicated for screen readers and are in any case inappropriate for most communications aimed at the general public.
Look at your export settings for PDFs and ensure that all security settings are removed from the document to ensure screen readers are not locked out.
Finally, once you have exported your document as a PDF, open it in Adobe Reader and perform the full accessibility check.
Search Engine Optimisation
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the means of ensuring that your content is found on the Internet by anyone using a search engine. You can increase your impact and make sure your audience finds out what they need to know by thinking about: the way your site is coded; how you structure your pages and information; and the language you use.
This section highlights opportunities for the improvement of online Healthwatch offerings. It also examines best practice for the SEO of rich media generally, and for YouTube channels specifically.
Code
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the definitive authority for the code used to build websites. For information on W3C, see our Accessibility guide.
For SEO, issues within your code can affect the process of a ‘spider’ (a robotic computer program that is constantly trawling the Internet indexing content). Incorrect or ineffective code can disrupt the spider and therefore affect your search engine ranking. Keeping your code compliant should reduce the chances of this happening.
(Note: The local Healthwatch websites will have content entered via a Content Management System (CMS) called Drupal. Adding content via the CMS will help avoid many code errors and replicating existing issues.)
The W3C provides definitive information and guides for coding standards here: http://www.w3.org/standards/
They provide an online validation service for approved code for websites here: http://validator.w3.org/
Recommendations:
Validate code through W3C to highlight errors or issues of concern.
Address any issues that are found.
Commit to W3C standard compliance to help ensure your site is viewable in major browsers/systems/device combinations.
Test on mobile devices, as their usage is increasing massively.
Page content
SEO analysis reviews a number of content elements that are used to construct your web pages. These include Page Titles, Meta Descriptions, Header Tags and Body Copy.
How these elements are used on your websites will significantly impact search engine placement.
Page title
Why is it important?
A title tag is the HTML code that creates the page title. It is one of the most important elements for good SEO, as it is generally the first thing users see on a search results page. The title tag also appears at the top of the browser when the page is open, is also the ‘Bookmark’ and is usually what appears on external linking websites. So describe the page succinctly, using your keywords.
In this example, the Title is clear but wastes ‘prime real estate’ by using Homepage first: ideally, Homepage would be LAST in the Title – if used at all – as it has little value to the user.
Meta description
Why is it important?
Although the Meta Description of a page does not directly affect ranking, it will impact click-through from search results. Meta Descriptions are the little snippets of text displayed under the page title within search results. They are vital to engaging the user, by providing a succinct description of the page content. They also present a ‘call to action’ (CTA) for the user to click through to the website. Like the page title, the meta description is one of the first elements a user sees.
Here the Meta Description is clear, concise and short (they could even have added more text). However, it does not have a call to action (CTA) to encourage or engage the user to explore further. Note: they use ‘The’ in the meta but not in the title (a content branding error); the tone is a bit terse, and ‘Homepage’ is in the title but not in the meta tag.
Recommendations:
Optimise both carefully and think about the tone, branding, etc.
Do not duplicate title tags exactly. Search engines can respond more effectively to a user’s query, and you can steer the user to the correct content too.
Page Titles should be short and concise with no more than 70 characters, as anything longer will get cut off.
The title should include the main keyword first, or near the front, as this is one of the strongest on-page ranking factors. Our recommended structure is: Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword - Page Name
Meta Descriptions should be about 156 characters.
Meta descriptions should be unique, specific to the page, incorporate keywords relevant to the page and include a call to action.
What are they?
Header Tags are HTML code ‘tags’ used to provide the structure of a website. Header tags run from a
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