The compliance with the standards and guidelines is to be enforced by the standards and guidelines policy. The set of rules that form the standards and guidelines are not strictly mandatory by their entirety, but while some of the rules are strictly required others are either advisory or voluntary. The writing style of the standards indicates which rules
must be strictly followed and which are flexible in the following manner:
- Mandatory rules are characterized by the use of the word ‘must’. It is anticipated that there will be no exceptions for a government agency not complying with these rules.
- Advisory rules are characterized by the use of the word ‘should’. These rules are to be considered as recommended practices that are highly important and desirable but are set as advisory to keep the standards and guidelines flexible and leave room for customization and creativity. It is worth noting that these guidelines maintain a high degree of objectivity otherwise these advisory rules would have qualified to be mandatory. Government agencies are advised to comply with these advisories to avoid falling into non-compliance errors.
- Voluntary rules are characterized by the use of the word ‘may’. These rules can be adopted by government agencies if deemed suitable. These rules have been drawn from good practices and conventions that have proved successful and can help agencies achieve high quality benchmarks for their websites.
It is the responsibility of each agency to address and bring into compliance, any non-compliant issues found in any website under their ownership by referring to the standards and guidelines rules and the aforementioned categorization.
This categorization of the rules is to be taken into consideration when audits for compliance are undertaken and would help in determining the compliance level of a website to the standards and guidelines.