Clear English Standard (websites)
Websites should be just as easy to read and use as the documents that bear the Clear English Standard.
That’s why you can ask us to clarity-check your site and, if it meets the criteria, you can display the web version of the Clear English Standard. This shows your customers you’ve put your site through a demanding external check of language and layout.
A unique feature of our scheme is that we’ll continually monitor your site, making frequent and regular checks and reporting to you any problems we find. The logo will tell your site visitors they’re viewing a Winning Website; and when they click on the logo, the link will tell them what we monitor and what’s excluded.
As you may want to alter your website often, the logo will say we’re monitoring its clarity rather than give the impression every detail’s been checked.
Another unique feature is that our logo will state what rating your site has gained:
Bronze — Main pages and menus are clear, well written and free of obvious errors of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Page layout is of a generally acceptable standard.
Main links work well. This is the entry-level rating for most accredited sites.
Silver — Main and most subsidiary pages are clear, well written and free of obvious errors of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Tone of voice is consistently pleasant and welcoming, where that’s appropriate. Page layout is of a generally high standard. Most links work well.
Gold — All pages are clear, well written and free of obvious errors of grammar, spelling and punctuation. Proofreading errors and broken links are rare. The site is highly accessible, broadly equivalent to W3C standard (see www.w3.org for more details, though we’re not insisting you get W3C accreditation). Page layout is consistently excellent. Overall, the site is a pleasure to read and use.
What’s the process?
- Report — You ask us to prepare a report on the clarity of your site. This costs £200 + VAT, which is refundable against your first year’s costs if you go ahead. The report will outline the main strengths and weaknesses of the language and layout.
- The report will recommend how many hours of initial editing will be needed to reach a particular standard (say bronze or silver); how many hours of monitoring may be needed to keep that standard in force in the first year or lift it to a higher level; and how much this is likely to cost. The figures will be based on the current size and complexity of the site, and how many changes you expect to make to it.
- Initial editing suggestions — Assuming you want to go ahead, we’ll provide initial editing suggestions. You decide which of them to incorporate. If we then decide the site merits the Clear English Standard, we’ll award it at a particular level (bronze, silver or gold) and send you the relevant logo to display on the site. There’ll be a clickable link to a browser window hosted by us, which will give factual details about the Winning Website scheme.
- Monitoring — We begin monitoring. You tell us when you add new material to the site. We check as necessary and tell you what we find.
- Pre-anniversary check and report — Four weeks before the accreditation anniversary, we’ll provide a free short report on the clarity of the site and say how many hours’ monitoring will be needed to maintain or exceed its current rating for the coming year. The accreditation stays in force unless you tell us otherwise before the anniversary.
- Resolving problems — If at any time we believe the clarity of the site has dipped to a lower-level rating or no longer merits a rating, we’ll give you one week’s notice and explain how to put things right. Failing this, we may withdraw the award or give a lower-level award.
- Exceeding the agreed monitoring hours — During each year, we may give you two weeks’ notice that we’ll need to exceed the agreed monitoring hours and ask you to top them up with a further payment. Generally this should happen only if a site grows far more than expected or otherwise alters much more than expected. You are not obliged to top up but we may not be able to keep the accreditation in force at the same or any level.
- Excluding particular documents — We may exclude particular documents or pages from the accreditation, and we’ll say this in the browser window. It’s a good idea to agree with us beforehand what type of material you wish us to exclude. For example, it may not be appropriate for us to check material that you’ve already published or printed elsewhere; or your organization’s standard application forms and letters; or tables of figures taken from reports. PDFs, unless they bear the print version of the Clear English Standard, are likely to be excluded.
- Editing before you upload new text — We’re always willing to help you prepare text or edit existing documents before you put them on the website. We can estimate for these at the prevailing rates for our editing services. This approach may save you the time and trouble of amending material after putting it on the website.
- Displaying the logo — To safeguard the scheme’s integrity, you must display the Winning Website logo at a legible size on at least the home page at all times. You must ensure it is clickable to our browser window. If for some reason you can’t display the logo, please ask us to provide an equivalent line of text and ensure it is clickable to our browser window.
- Ownership of the logo — The logo remains our property. If we ask you to remove it, you must do so immediately.
How clear is the logo at small sizes?
The logo will still look good when small but we’ll be setting a minimum size to make sure it’s always legible.
What are the criteria for accreditation?
Basically the site should be easy to read and use by most of its intended audience.
What’s the cost?
Our initial report will give details of the cost of putting your site through the accreditation process. Please email us your website address and your authority to provide the initial report (cost £200 + VAT). Our current editing rate is £70/hr + VAT.
Any questions?
Please call Martin Cutts on +44 (0) 1663 733177 if you’d like to discuss how to make yours a Winning Website.