New Zealand Government Web Standards

4.2 Publish documents in most accessible format possible

New standards released

The New Zealand Web Standards 2.0 were released in March 2009 and replace the previous version, the New Zealand Government Web Standards 1.0 (below).  See Meeting the standards for more information.

The Standard

4.2 If you cannot publish a document that validates to the approved formal grammars as stated in Standard 3.1, then publish the document in the most accessible format possible.


The following are considered accessible formats:

If it is not possible or not feasible to publish in an accessible format, then the document can be published in its native (considered non-accessible) format if - and only if - the document is:

In all cases of any of the above non-accessible format documents being published, the document must:

i. be assisted with a summary of the key points contained within the document (which itself must validate to the approved formal grammars stated in standard 3.1), and ii. be assisted with contact details (which can be a link to contact details) so that the content may be discussed or requested in an accessible format., and iii. state why the web site is providing the document only in a non accessible format., and iv. all of the content provided for i., ii. and iii. is located on the web site in association with the document such that it is unambiguous as to which document this content pertains.

Notes:

specialist audience (as defined in the Glossary of key concepts) special-purpose document (as defined in the Glossary of key concepts)

Guide to this Standard

Be cautious about using proprietary file formats such as Microsoft Word or Excel.

An agency is expected to have good reason to deem a document as special-purpose and/or for a specialist audience. Your agency may be asked to justify why a document on your agency's web site(s) qualifies as such, if and when a site audit is undertaken.

Open Document Format (ODF)

ODF shows a lot of promise for open document accessibility and usability.

At the time of writing, ODF is still in relatively early days and there are still variants. It is not considered mature enough as yet to include as an accessible format, however developments and uptake of ODF will be monitored and the position on ODF adjusted and expanded accordingly.

Refer Oasis, Ecma Office Open XML Formats frequently asked questions

Related Recommendation

4.1.3 - Compression of large files or collections of small files. Large files made available broken down to collections of small files and/or made available in compressed and uncompressed “duo” versions.

Rationale for this Standard

Support for accessibility features in PDFs by screen readers is limited to the latest versions (which few people have). Correctly marking up a PDF document is more difficult than producing HTML:

rtf is considered in many courts to be more accessible than pdf - users can load into the editing tool (generally word processing) of their choice and use the search and find tools they are familiar with. Additionally, some individuals and organisations are more comfortable with rtf over Microsoft Word docs because they don't support embedded code and thus reduce potential virus risk.