Technical specifications for new London Met websites

External contractors employed to produce web page templates / websites for London Met must conform to the following MINIMUM standards:

XHTML 1.0 Transitional
XHTML must validate at http://validator.w3.org/

CSS 1
CSSmust validate at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
CSS styles should anticipate and enable the consistent display of commonly occurring XHTML elements.

WCAG 1.0 Double-A
i.e. Priority 1 and Priority 2 checkpoints defined in WAI Guidelines. These can be checked at (for example) WAVE, totalvalidator.com, or tawdis.net

Relative sizes should be used in preference to absolute sizes for fonts. Similarly, relative rather than absoute positioning should be used for page display elements.

Within a template, areas of fixed content (which are consistent in all pages which use the template) should be clearly identified with commented labels to distinguish them from areas of user-editable content.

We would expect pages to render consistently in the current popular browsers (Firefox/Mozilla, IE6 and later, Opera, Safari) on both Windows and Mac (where applicable) and 'gracefully' degrade on older browsers. There is no need to consider Netscape 4.7.

Adequate navigation (using menus and/or breadcrumbs, for example) should be provided to allow users to move easily between levels in the site hierarchy. Up to four levels should be assumed.

A non-displaying link to the main page content should be provided for screen readers, allowing users to skip over navigation menus.

We will prioritise designers and developers who can demonstrate they have conducted successful tests using assistive technologies such as screen readers.

An alternative 'print' style sheet must be provided to enable pages to print clearly and legibly in A4 portrait format.

Any supplied graphics should be optimized for web use, ideally GIF/JPEG/PNG format and with 72pix/inch resolution.

The use of Microformats (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microformats) is encouraged, especially when displaying Contact information.