The Mississippi Department of Education (MDE) continues to promote a positive image and maintaining a strong reputation among educational entities. MDE recognizes that electronic publication technology constantly evolves, and that any policies or regulations related to web page development must also evolve. In place are standards and guidelines designed to ensure that information published electronically is visually appealing, well written, user friendly, and follows the same high standards as other forms of published information.

Documents published on the world wide web are official communications and electronic publications of the Mississippi Department of Education. All electronic publications are subject to the same policies and standards as printed publications.

The primary purpose of publishing information on the world wide web is to disseminate information to local school districts, teachers and administrators. MDE must use this opportunity to promote a positive image of the Department and recognize that these documents are a vital public relations tool. The web pages should be well designed, clearly written and accurate. The web pages should also be grammatically correct and correctly spelled. The web pages should be interactive, allowing visitors to respond to issues, requests and concerns through the electronic medium. The MDE web pages should provide an overview of department functions, vision, mission and goals for each Bureau and Office.

The web pages should not only be designed to provide information and resources to teachers and administrators, but also to parents, students, legislators, news media, business and industry leaders, other State Departments of Education and to other visitors interested in public education programs and services in Mississippi.

Standard 1

Official Mississippi Department of Education pages are those publicly accessible electronic documents which represent the Department, bureaus, offices or staff.

They must follow all applicable laws and Department policies and standards regarding nondiscrimination, libel and copyright, offensive material, etc. The MDE homepage will contain the nondiscrimination statement.

This includes primary links to other pages which may be maintained by other individuals. A page may be considered offensive if it contains links to pages with objectionable material. It is not legal to publish the work of others online without their permission. It is not legal to use trademarked logos or other graphics without permission.
 

All official MDE pages will contain the Mississippi Department of Education logo, wordmark or banner.

This will help users navigate the identifiable MDE pages. The logos, banners and wordmarks are available in several sizes and colors.
 

Standard 3

Official web pages will also contain the date of last revision, the name and e-mail address of the person responsible for maintaining the information on the page, and a link to the MDE "homepage" or top-level web page at http://www.mde.k12.ms.us.

The Office of Management Information Systems will be primarily responsible for all web administration throughout MDE, and first tier level of homepages for the Bureaus, containing general information about the Department. This will be done to ensure consistency and uniformity among primary pages.

E-mail buttons may be used to contact the person responsible for maintaining the information contained on official pages. The e-mail button should activate an e-mail screen to aid the visitor in communicating with the Department. The user should have a way to contact this individual for further information about your subject/office, or to notify your office about possible errors on your webpage. An e-mail address may be used in place of the e-mail button.
 

Standard 4

Official pages must not be constructed in such a manner as to prevent persons with disabilities from obtaining essential information on the page.

Textual information or links to other information may not be contained solely in a graphic image. If an image map is used to provide links to additional pages, there must also be a text-based method of navigating. If graphical buttons are used, an "ALT" text in the IMG tag must be used. Essential information contained in audio files must also be presented in text.