Swedish National Guidelines for Public Sector Websites

The Swedish National Guidelines for Public Sector Websites takes an integrated approach to usability, accessibility and standardization. The purpose of the Guidelines is to support the procurement, development, and maintenance of a website by a public administration so that it offers equal opportunity usage for all citizens. The 2006 version has now been translated to english.

Quoting from the announcement: “The Guidelines are divided into chapters which can be read separately depending on the reader’s role and responsibilities. The order of the chapters is intended to mirror the lifecycle of a website.

  • Chapter 1 covers the overall communications objectives of a website, which should be used as the basis for its development.
  • Chapter 2 presents the development process as steps towards a defined objective.
  • Chapter 3 shows methods for website design and web page coding, along with web standards.
  • Chapters 4 and 5 describe the basic content and services a website should provide, giving additional information on how to write for web-based media as well as methods for keeping the website up to date.
  • Chapters 6, 7 and 8 cover the development of web content for mobile devices, Content Management Systems (CMS) / authoring tools, and assistive technologies (AT).

A survey carried out in February 2007 showed that over 90% of those responsible for public administration websites in Sweden were aware of the Guidelines, with 80% or more actively using them.”

The Guidelines are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Sweden license.

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