New Zealand Government Web Standards.

The Boss website framework has been built so as to comply with the New Zealand Government Web Standards 2.0. Below are links to each section of the standards which are in four broad categories along with an explanation of how Boss complies. The four categories are as follows:

1. Strategy and operations
2. Content and Design
3. Legal and Policy
4. Technical

Boss is a SAAS (Software as a Service) for Graphic Designers. Categories 1, 2, & 3 relate to the strategy, design, and content of the website which is developed by the Graphic Designer with input from the site owner. The Boss Framework supports that development with a technically sound platform, which can control any aspect of the website's delivery. Where needed we can work with designers to ensure that the required standards are being met. The technical approach of Boss as it relates to the standards is as follows:

Strategy and operations

http://webstandards.govt.nz/strategy-and-operations/

• A website strategy that includes full compliance with Government Web Standards is essential for all government websites making the Boss Solution a good strategic choice.

Content and design

http://webstandards.govt.nz/content-and-design/

• In terms of the Required pages or sections and their content, Boss provides a secure interface called the Boss.Console which allows the person with sufficient credentials to create and modify pages, content and media.
  It is the responsibility of the Design Firm and the Department to ensure that the correct content is displayed and accessible as outlined. It is the responsibility of the Boss system to ensure this is possible for the involved parties.
• When linking to non HTML files, Boss provides via a completely flexible template structure a highly easy to use interface that will deliver a highly consistent and compliant result.
• When printing pages from Boss we can use css templates to provide a printed page to the printer that achieves full compliance. The design of this printed page is the responsibility of the Design firm or Department.
  

Legal and policy

http://webstandards.govt.nz/legal-and-policy-2/

• Utilising the same Boss.Console as mentioned above, the design firm and/or Government department can publish fully compliant copyright notices, privacy policies, disclaimers and terms of use.
  

Technical

http://webstandards.govt.nz/technical/
The nature of the Boss Framework is such that all parts of any website page delivered via the Boss Framework is able to be edited and managed from the Boss.Console. This features allows for any content and mark up (HTML, CSS etc.) to be made able to validate with the numerious web standards in existence. This is especially true for the standards as outlined in this section of the Government Webstandards. It also allows for any language codes to be used (including en-NZ and mi).

• Boss allows for multilingual support based on UTF-8
• Boss supports designers to meet WCAG2.0 success criteria
• Boss avoids Frameset doctypes, Markup redirects, and server-side image maps
• We can complete A-grade browser testing before site launch as required.
• Boss does not rely on scripts, applets and other programmatic objects to delivery any content of the website concerned.
• Boss is designed to incorporate heavy use of css stylesheets. All sites are delivered to operate successfully without css support.

The flexible nature of the Boss Framework allows for these standards to be meet but subsquently requires those constructing websites with Boss to make sure the content they input does meet the specifications and guidelines required to achieve compliance.