Policies and standards

The University of the West of England recognises the value of publishing electronic information. To promote the quality, accessibility and accuracy of such information, the University maintains web standards which should apply to material published on behalf of UWE.

Accessibility

Please also see the University's web accessibility policy

The University is committed to making its web resources accessible. We aspire to meet the four principles of accessibility published by the W3C:

  • Content must be perceivable
  • User interface components in the content must be operable
  • Content and controls must be understandable
  • Content must be robust enough to work with current and future technologies

In addition:

  • Where appropriate, we aim to offer alternatives to meet the different needs of people using our web resources

The operational implications of these principles may vary between different forms and uses of such resources. For example, learning resources for Blackboard may be generated using automated conversion tools. In this case, the tools rather than the author should ensure compliance with the Developer's Guide (right). The University e-learning development team offer advice on promoting the accessibility of e-learning resources.

Advice is also available on the University's support for accessibility on our website

URL policy

The University has a URL Policy for approving subdomains of the uwe.ac.uk domain. Within their own websites, web site administrators are advised to establish a policy as to whether internal links will be root-relative, document-relative or absolute.

Cookies

The University has published a Cookie Policy on our website. This explains to users the different types of cookies and their appropriate use.

You must never use cookies to store personal data or passwords.

Copyright

Please see the University's Copyright Guidelines (PDF, 154 KB), and guidance on the Copyright page.

Standards and targets for public web resources

Web resources intended for public access which are produced and hosted solely by us, the University of the West of England, are expected to comply in full with the specifications detailed in the UWE Standards and targets for public web resources.