HL Deb 08 March 2000 vol 610 cc140-1WA
Lord Avebury

asked Her Majesty's Government:

Whether the design of the Prison Service website conforms to the recommendations in the Cabinet Office guidelines Framework policy and guidelines for the use, management and design of public sector websites. [HL1223]

Lord Bassam of Brighton

The Prison Service's website went live on 21 May 1999, some six months prior to the publication of the Cabinet Office guidelines. It does not conform 100 per cent to these guidelines but does conform to the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) HyperText Markup Language 3.2 specification. This ensures that the site's functionality is available to as many as possible, including the visually impaired for whom there is a text only version. The Prison Service's website, therefore, conforms to the spirit, if not the letter, of the Cabinet Office guidelines.