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Technical Regulations for AID/W external website pages on www.usaid.gov
OK-it is not as bad as it looks. We broken this into five sections to make this easy to follow. As always, if you have any questions contact Scott Gruber.
The "Nos"
- No links to USAID intranet pages are allowed.
- No one other than LPA/PIPOS may use the agency seal on HTML pages.
- No cookies are allowed. If a cookie must be used, please contact LPA/PIPOS.
- No <font> tags to format text. The USAID stylesheet is used to specify fonts and font sizes.
- No animated .gifs.
- No splash pages.
- No page counters. Statistics based on server logs will be provided upon request.
- No reference of any kind to a contractor's participation in the creation of a page.
- 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.
- No java applications are allowed. Scripts, such as JavaScript, must be cross-platform compatible down to Mozilla 3.0 and Internet Explorer 6.0 and must be reviewed by IDS before being uploaded to the USAID site.
- No form should store information in a log file. Review regulations on privacy and provide information to content provider if necessary. Such files will periodically be removed.
- No form collecting personal information will be permitted unless a link is provided to the USAID privacy statement and an explanation of the use of the information is given.
HTML Pages
- All HTML pages must use the template found here. If you have some extraordinary reason that you cannot use the template, contact LPA/PIPOS. Be advised, however, that we are stubborn.
- HTML 4.01 standards must be maintained. Use no proprietary or poorly written code. For more about HTML 4.01, read here.
- All pages must be compatible with Mozilla 3.0 and Internet Explorer 6.0.
- With minor exception, all pages must include a right hand navigation column. No navigation will exist outside of the right hand navigation column. Navigation modules that are used as part of a page or site's navigation should be included in the page using Server-Side-Includes (SSI), and all links in an included module should be relative to the server root, so they will work correctly if your module is included in another section of the site. Please keep all modules in a sub-folder titled "modules."
- Pages must link to the USAID external stylesheet (may be relative or absolute). Designers may also create supplemental stylesheets. Elements in pages or supplemental stylesheets may not overwrite elements already addressed in the main stylesheet. For example: link colors, the "breadcrumb" class, and the "caption" class are already defined in the stylesheet, so your supplemental stylesheet or coding should not overwrite these elements.
- Modules can only use the following colors from the USAID stylesheet. Colors of other page elements should not conflict with the standard USAID color palette:
Dark Blue
class="Blue" | Light Blue
class="LightBlue" |
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Dark Gray
class="DarkGray" | Light Gray
class="Gray" |
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- All pages must include breadcrumbs.
- The top text heading on each page is
<h2>. Headings after <h2> proceed in logical, descending order. The <h1> tag is not used on the USAID site.
- Links to other pages on the USAID server must be relative. For example, instead of
<a href=http://www.usaid.gov/mydirectory/new.html>, use <a href="/mydirectory/new.html">.
- Links to pages on other web sites must be relevant to the content of the page. External links should be vetted by a direct-hire subject matter expert for consistency with agency programs and must be checked frequently to ensure that they are current and correct. All links to sites not residing on a .gov server must utilize the "Goodbye" script:
<a href="/cgi-bin/goodbye?http://www.externalsite.com/page.html">. This script must only be used on HTML pages, as it will not function correctly from PDF, Word, or other downloadable documents.
- URLs that contain nonalphanumeric characters, such as those on database-driven web sites, can become truncated by the goodbye script and not function. To fix this, you must add the prefix url= to the beginning of the url and change all special characters to their percent-encoded escape characters. A correct link would look like:
<a href="/cgi-bin/goodbye?url=http://www.samplesite.gov/search/search.do?oppId=12345%26mode=VIEW" >.
- Graphics should be small in file size and relevant to the content of the page. If you are going to include a text caption, please the photo-and-caption table format from the sub-page template.
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<img> tags should contain height and width attributes, as well as "alt" text that describes in a few words the subject of the graphic. Photos and diagrams should be framed with a one-pixel black border, either coded in HTML as border="1" or incorporated as part of the graphic.
- IP addresses cannot be used as a host name.
Files and Links to Files Other Than HTML pages on www.usaid.gov
- PDF files should be tagged, structured documents that contain a logical reading order so they can be easily accessed using a screen reader for windows. In addition, images or figures within PDF files should contain text alternative descriptions where applicable. In order to implement these accessibility features, you need the full version of Adobe Acrobat 5.0 and the Make Accessible Plug-in.
- Links to PDF files must include information on the file's creation date and last-modified date. We recommend placing this information in the
title attribute of the <a> tag.
- Whenever a file other than an .html file is used, its type and size must be notated as [xxx, 000k]. If you need an exception to this rule, please contact LPA/PIPOS.
- The valid file extensions include: .htm, .html, .txt, .gif, .jpg, .pdf, .doc, .wpd, .wp5. If you wish to use other extensions, please contact LPA/PIPOS.
- Links to extranet pages are permitted, as long as the notation "[extranet]" is include next to the link.
- IP addresses cannot be used as a host name.
Accessibility
- All pages give persons with disabilities access to information that is comparable to the access available to others by being Section 508 compliant. A few examples of Section 508 requirements are explained briefly below, but USAID Web Site pages must comply with ALL Section 508 guidelines listed here.
- 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 and Security
Titles and Metadata
- Each file must include a title in the
<title> tag. Links to pages without titles (or with malformed titles) that appear in the daily updates page will be removed and risk not being indexed.
- Document titles must adhere to the following format:
<title>USAID [Topic]: [Item] <title>
where [Topic] is a term indicating your subcategory in the USAID web site, and [Item] is a sufficient description of the document you are posting. Please select your [Topic] from the following list that generally covers the layout of the Web site:
Africa
Agriculture
American Schools and Hospitals Association
Asia and the Near East
Business
Careers
Democracy & Governance
Economic Growth & Trade
Education & Universities
Environment
Europe & Eurasia
Food for Peace
Humanitarian Assistance
Global Partnerships
Global Health
Inspector General
Latin American & the Caribbean
Private and Voluntary Cooperation
Policy
Women in Development
- Files must include the following six
<meta> tags in the document head:
- Responsible Official: name and bureau/division
- Author: name and bureau/division
- Description: a one-sentence summary of the document
- Keywords: Keywords should reflect the topics covered in the page content. At least one keyword should be selected from the topic list presented above. Other keywords can be selected from the USAID Thesaurus, which can be found at www.dec.org/pdf_docs/PNACD400.pdf.
- Posted: mm/dd/yyyy
- Language: xx
- The language meta tag must use the syntax
<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="xx"/> where xx is a two-letter code (or multiple codes, separated by commas) from the list of ISO 639 letter codes. The language meta tag is used to decribe the primary intended audience of the page. Pages intended for use by more than one language group should use multiple languages in the meta tag. Pages intended for use by one audience but that contains elements in another language - for example, a page of Spanish phrases for English-speaking travellers, should use English in the meta tag. Elements within a page that are presented in other languages, such as the individual Spanish phrases in the above example, should employ the HTML lang="xx" attribute, so that this content will be parsed correctly by screen readers and search engines. For example, a page that lists press releases in English and Arabic would use the lang attribute thusly:
<a lang="en" href="press/headline56.html">A Local Soccer Legend Trains Palestinian Coaches</a><br>
<a lang="ar" href="press/arheadline56.html">أسطورة كرة قدم محلي يدرب المدربين الفلسطينيين</a>
- Meta tag keywords must be both site- and page-specific. 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.
Server and File Requirements
- All filenames should be lowercase and must contain no spaces. The server is case sensitive and only allows limited punctuation marks in filenames. In the event an external content provider uses mixed case, please verify the references.
- Each directory should contain a starting point named "index.html".
- There will be no Java applications within a page. IDS must review JavaScript, Perl, and CGI code for security and functionality. Scripts must be cross-platform compatible down to Mozilla 3.0 and Internet Explorer 6.0.
- Total page weight, including dependent graphics, should not exceed 150K unless absolutely necessary (such as ADS chapters). In the event of a link to a document over this amount, provide the file size within the text next to the link to warn the user and give him/her the opportunity to avoid downloading the document.
- USAID's external web applications are currently using ColdFusion 3.1 from Allaire and any ODBC compliant database. Developers must use this toolset.
- Files with Microsoft FrontPage extensions and FrontPage files that use "bots" are not accepted.
Right of Review and Revision
- All pages are subject to the review of LPA and IDS. This review is conducted to ensure the pages are of consistent quality, to assure that pages meet the technical standards stated here and are consistent with stated agency policies and positions.
- IDS and LPA webmasters have the authority to directly alter pages residing on the USAID server as necessary.
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