Speaker's information
Coordinator 'Digital Media' at the Department of Communication of the Ministry Of Health, Welfare and Sports in The Netherlands. The website http://www.minvws.nl is one of our responsibilities.
Information sur l'auteur
Gerrhit BERKOUWER est le Coordinateur 'Digital Media' au Département de la Communication du Ministère de la Santé du Bien-ëtre et des Sports aux Pays-Bas. Le site Web http://www.minvws.nl est une de ses responsabilités.
Short paper
'Digital Media' at the ministry of HealthThe Ministry Of Health, Welfare and Sports are the first ministry in The Netherlands who fully applied Web accessibility standards in the framework of the 'Digital Media' programme. This was first done on the website http://www.minvws.nl/, achieving WCAG 1.0 Double-A conformance in 2004.
Multidisciplinary approachAn important success factor was the multidisciplinary team which conducted the 'Digital Media' programme, including web advisors, web developers, webmasters, human factor specialists (10 persons). A multidisciplinary approach has a lot of advantages in such a big project. The focus was on several aspects: strategy, consultancy, design, implementation, and maintenance.
First resultsThe main website of the Ministry of Health was re-designed (http://www.minvws.nl). It was the first governmental website in The Netherlands following this approach, on this scale The main features regarding accessibility are :
- Level Double-A conformance WCAG 1.0
- Separation of content & presentation
- XHTML 1.0 Strict & CSS design
- 'Layered' implementation, works in all / most devices
- Separation of content and presentation
- XHTML / CSS - code validation
- Printing: separate style sheet
Accessibility is an important objective of the 'Web standards' approach. But it is far to be the only advantage. Following Web standards proved to provide many advantages:
- More happy visitors - more devices - more 'Google' - more speed - more control over site maintenance - more control over site development
- Cheaper hosting - better quality assurance - 'forward' compatible - better 'exchangeable' - good for image
- Less code - less costs - less chaos - less stress
Thus e-accessibility is not the only reason for adopting accessibility standards !
A challenge for Dutch governmental websitesDuring the coming years Web standards will be far more important for the Dutch governmental websites. We have a goal and hope to achieve this already in 2006. All corporate websites of all the 13 ministries will use the 'Web standards' approach for their corporate websites to achieve accessible, find-able and durable websites.
- Set of governmental guidelines for accessible and durable Web sites, see http://webrichtlijnen.overheid.nl/ (in Dutch...)
- Governmental metadata & taxonomy for all content (Dublincore)
One barrier we often observed is the poor knowledge of e-accessibility and standards in governmental agencies. But this slowly improves. Knowledge is also in many Web companies is limited. This can be a chance for smaller companies to come more rapidly with solutions compliant with e-accessibility requirements.
