Standards for Sites

The standards below apply to every website of the Velocity Interoperability Network. They are conditions of adoption: a site that does not meet them is not published, and a page that ceases to meet them is withdrawn until it does. The standards exist so that the sites of the Network read as the work of one government, whichever department or service a visitor happens to be reading.

Most of the standards are met by using the shared package as supplied. The shell provides the skip link, the landmark regions and the focus outlines; the components provide the type sizes and the contrast; the site configuration provides the single contact address. What remains for a site to get right is its prose, its links, its photographs and its configuration, and it is on these that review concentrates.

4.5:1

Minimum contrast of text against its background

3

Viewport widths at which every page is checked

0

Links to websites outside the Network

1

Contact address on each site, by email

Areas. The standards fall into eight areas, set out below.

Prose

Plain, formal government prose in British spelling. Sentences state what is the case and what a reader should do. Sites do not use marketing language, exclamation, or the first person plural except in the name of an institution.

Dates and numbers

Dates in prose are written day, month, year: 6 September 2026. Dates in the source of press releases are recorded in year-month-day form so that they sort. Numbers are written in words where they read naturally in a sentence and as numerals in dates, measurements, tables and key figures.

Contact details

A site publishes one contact address, by email, held in its configuration and rendered by the shared link component. No page carries a telephone number, a street address or a link to a social network.

Links

Every link on a site resolves to a page of that site or, through the footer, to another site of the Network. No page links elsewhere. A link to a page that does not yet exist is not published; the page is written first or the link is removed.

Photographs

Photographs are local files kept with the site, shown only where a pattern provides for them. Each carries a caption of the form Photo: First Last, and each photographer named in a caption is listed on the site's copyright page.

Interface

A site adds no icons or badges of its own. The only marks drawn are the five the shared package supplies: the envelope beside the contact address, the chevron that opens a submenu, an accordion or the banner, and the three small marks within the official-website banner. Hover states change colour or add an underline; nothing moves or grows under the pointer. Motion is limited to the transitions the package provides and is disabled when a visitor prefers reduced motion.

Accessibility

Text contrasts with its background at 4.5:1 or better; links are distinguishable from prose by colour and underline; every page has one title and a skip link; every control is reachable by keyboard and shows a focus outline; every photograph has a description.

Structure

Every page exports a title, and the site exports a description. Pages render on the server; the browser runs only the scripts the shared package supplies for navigation, disclosure and forms. A site adds no packages of its own.

Publication checks. Each standard is checked in a particular way before a site or a new page is published. The table records the check, the standard it tests and how it is carried out.

Review before publication. A review is carried out by a person other than the author, in the order below. The same review is repeated whenever a site takes a new release of the shared package, since a release may change how existing pages render.

1. 1

   Step 1: Read the prose

   Read every page for register, spelling and dates. Correct the source, not the rendered page.

2. 2

   Step 2: Follow every link

   Open each link in the navigation, the footer and the body of every page. Confirm that each route exists in the site. Remove or complete any that do not resolve.

3. 3

   Step 3: Check the photographs

   Confirm that each photograph is a local file, that each caption is of the form Photo: First Last, and that every photographer named appears on the copyright page.

4. 4

   Step 4: Run the checks

   Run the type check and lint for the site. Both must pass with nothing reported.

5. 5

   Step 5: View at three widths

   View every page at a narrow, a medium and a wide viewport. Nothing should overflow, and tables should scroll within their own frame rather than the page.

6. 6

   Step 6: View with reduced motion

   Enable the reduced motion preference and confirm that pages render in their final state at once.

7. 7

   Step 7: Record the review

   Note the date, the pages reviewed and the person who reviewed them. A site is published only after the record is complete.

The standards are enforced through the patterns and the adoption procedure. See Page Patterns for what a page may contain, Adopting the System for the setting up of a site, and the values in Design Tokens for the contrast a site's colours must achieve. The Network's accessibility statement applies to this site as to every other.

A site that cannot meet a standard because of its content should describe the difficulty to the design team at contact@design.gov.vin before publication, so that the standard or the pattern can be revised for every site rather than set aside for one.