A website should do more than just look good—it should also meet the highest standards of usability and accessibility.

At UNO, we are committed to serving all audiences—and by adhering to established international standards for the coding of web pages, and striving to be knowledgeable of user expectation and experience, we hope to do just that.

Usability refers to a user's expectations regarding the design, placement, and operation of page elements. For instance, where do users expect a link to the home page to be located? Or, what is the shape of a button? Attention to research in the area of usability better serves the public than trying to 'reinvent' the web.

Accessibility refers to the ability of diverse users and technologies to 'read' web-based content. Toward this end, we have separated content from style and structure by using Cascading Style Sheets Positioning (CSS-P). Support for CSS is now widespread, and older, non-compliant browsers still get all the content, they just see it 'differently.'

By testing our pages against the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Markup Validator, we can assure our compliance with the XHTML 1.0 Strict standard. We also use the W3C's CSS Validator. Additionally, pages are tested for 508c compliance using the Cynthia Says Portal.

Unfortunately, not all of our pages meet these standards yet, but we are working to make all of our new pages do so. Pages that display the '508,' 'XHTML,' and 'CSS' buttons in the lower-right-hand corner have been tested and have passed.