FaHCSIA

Time is ticking towards the December requirement that Australian Government websites be Level A-compliant with the WCAG 2.0. In a bid to meet that requirement and to generally improve the quality of its online content, the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA) engaged Stamford Interactive, who in turn asked me to produce an online style guide. Style guides can be many things. This one was about 100 pages of department style conventions, and the best practices for wielding punctuation, correct grammar, and how to write for the web to create content that is findable, relevant, usable and accessible. The best style guide is useful and used by generators and managers of content. This style guide was introduced to some of its users at training sessions conducted by Stamford Interactive. It will be interesting to see if the style guide is evident in content published on the site in the future.