Standalone Web Sites Financed Under USAID Acquisition Instruments
Those building USAID stand-alone project sites should work with their respective bureaus and LPA/PIPOS. The primary purpose of a stand alone site is to meet the operational objective of a USAID-funded project. Web sites trageted to the U.S. public should be integrated into www.usaid.gov.
Web sites produced under acquisition instruments must not, for example:
- provide general or detailed descriptions of Agency activities or projects intended to educate the public about Agency goals, objectives, or operations above the level of that specific project,
- provide Agency policy or official guidance,
- disseminate "success stories" or other material that describe in non-technical terms for a general audience the results of Agency-financed projects, or
- disseminate any information related to Agency budget allocations, Agency administrative processes or other aspects of Agency operations or organization beyond what is necessary for project implementation.
The information residing on a project website should only deal with the actual implementation of the project. Once the website content begins to move into information broader than the project iteslf or is targeted to audiences broader than the targeted recipients of the project, that is when you should instead post that content on usaid.gov or another more appropriate venue.
According to ADS 557: "Web sites produced under USAID-financed acquisition instruments to achieve project implementation goals not covered in 557.3.4 and that DO NOT speak authoritatively on behalf of the Agency or the U.S. Government must not reside on .gov domains."
As a general rule, it is highly unlikely that your website will reside on a .gov domain. If, after reading ADS section 557.3.4, you think your stand alone site should reside on a .gov domain, please contact us.
Stand-alone sites produced under USAID-financed acquistion insturments must follow these guidelines:
General
- The site homepage or primary entry page(s) must include the LPA/PIPOS approved use of the agency brandmark found here. The Agency brand must be "above the fold" (visible in the first screen when the monitor resolution is set at 800x600 or above). Brandmark use is not required on second- and third-level pages.
- The Agency brand must meet the following requirements:
- Minimum height of on-screen horizontal identity = 70 pixels
- Minimum width of on-screen horizontal identity = 238 pixels
- Minimum height of on-screen vertical identity = 126 pixels
- Minimum width of on-screen vertical identity = 158 pixels
- A minimum area within and surrounding the Identity must
be kept clear of any other typography as well as
graphic elements as specified in the USAID Graphics Standards Manual.
- The brand must link to http://www.usaid.gov/index.html
- Web sites produced under acquisition instruments to achieve project implementation goals must be marked appropriately on the index page of the site and every major entry point to the Web site with a disclaimer that states:
"The information provided on this Web site is not official U.S. Government information and does not represent the views or positions of the U.S. Agency for International Development or the U.S. Government."
- The URL must be reported to LPA/PIPOS for review.
- To meet federal guidelines for information quality, any content that describes official Agency programs must be placed on the official Agency website at usaid.gov.
- No advertisement that implies that USAID endorses any specific commercial product, commodity, or service will be permitted. This includes the contractor who has constructed the site.
Accessibility
- All pages must give persons with disabilities access to information that is comparable to the access available to others by being Section 508 compliant. Site content must be compliant with all requirements of the Section 508 amendments to the Rehabilitation Act, listed here. A few examples of common accessibility problems are listed below:
- The most basic idea with Section 508 is that there must be a text equivalent for every non-text element provided via "alt" tags or additional text. Non-text elements include:
- images (including those used as list bullets and spacers)
- graphical representations of text (including symbols)
- image map regions
- animations (e.g., animated GIFs)
- applets and programmatic objects
- ascii art
- graphical buttons
- sounds (played with or without user interaction)
- stand-alone audio files
- audio tracks of video
- video
- Pages that present data in tables must be coded so it can be understood with a screen reader (i.e: "scope" or "id" attribute.)
- Pages must be navigable without the use of a mouse (ie: tab, arrow and return keys.)
- Remember that the information in the "alt" attribute must be equivalent to the information provided in the non-text element -- an example of an appropriate "alt" attribute might be:
<img src="globe.gif" height="100" width="150" alt="Image of the globe, with Africa highlighted">.
Privacy Policy
- You must have a Privacy Policy posted on your site that describes the actions of your server operations, i.e. what information is collected (if any), what the information is used for, etc. Further information about the USAID requirements for Privacy Policies are located here. If you are targeting an audience of children below the age of 13, you must comply with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
- Your Privacy Policy must be translated into a machine-readable format, pursuant to OMB Memorandum M-03-22. Please see our guidance on implementing this technology.
- No cookies are allowed.
Metadata
- Files must include the following five
<meta> tags in the document head:
- Responsible Official: name and bureau/division
- Author: name and company/NGO
- Description: a one-sentence summary of the document
- Keywords: relevant search terms - these should be both site- and page-specific. Try to include lay terms in addition to technical development terms.
- Posted: mm/dd/yyyy
- Language: xx
-
It is not sufficient to replicate a single set of meta tags, with identical descriptions and keywords, throughout an entire site.
Non-HTML files must include this type of data to the full extent possible.
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