Compliance Corner

The material on these pages is designed to make you aware of various issues that have arisen in the context of projects achieving compliance with the Technical Standards and Guidelines. Whilst they may not be introduced by a specific frequently asked question, they represent the advice offered with regard to a variety of compliance issues.

Compliance Corner Contents

1. DOCTYPE declaration
   DOCTYPE declarations are needed to ensure that browsers pointed at each (X)HTML page correctly interpret the mark-up it contains, i.e. the 'flavour' of HTML or XHTML being used. Without a DOCTYPE declaration, your pages may not be correctly displayed by a sufficiently wide range of browsers.
2. Character encoding
   Browsers need to know your pages' character encoding (or "charset") in order to display correctly the characters used in its content. Without the correct character encoding a browser may not manage the conversion into the correct characters for your pages.
3. Accessibility : WAI
   As part of the Standards compliance testing procedures, your project is tested for compliance with the W3C Web Access Initiative (WAI) recommendations. The aim of the WAI is to set standards which should ensure a high degree of accessibility to your website for users with disabilities.
4. Migration Strategy : PDF
   A migration strategy is the plan by which you would hope to render your material more accessible by offering a more open format where necessary. Portable Document Format (PDF) is a proprietary format which raises issues in this context.
5. Testing Your Webpages :
   There are numerous services available to help you investigate whether your website is meeting both NOF-digi and international standards on accessibility and validation.
6. Server Logs :
   Projects are required to have access to the server logfiles for their website and ensure that are used to provide reports to NOF on the usage of the website. This section covers what server logs are and do as well as how you can ensure you are in compliance.
7. Preservation Strategy:
   Projects that are digitising content must show that they are considering preservation as an integral part of their digitisation process. Projects should return details of their preservation strategy. This section gives guidance on what details need to be returned and advice on producing a preservation strategy.
8. Security Standards:
   This section looks at the aspects of security standards that are a minimum requirement for the security of any project website. It provides guidance on suitable and essential measures to safeguard data and the integrity of your website.
9. Javascript:
   Javascript is a very useful tool for enhancing Web page delivery and its use is widespread. However, it can be problematic. Read on to learn how to ensure your use of javascript is compatible with accessibility requirements, with older or more esoteric Web clients and with the NOF-digi technical standards.