The Dutch government has legislatively mandated accessibility for websites, according to Dutch developer Peter Paul Koch. Accessibility is now mandatory as of Sept. 1 of 2006.

The highlights are:

• valid HTML 4.01 or XHTML 1.0
• CSS and semantic HTML and separation of structure and presentation
• progressive enhancement
• the W3C DOM (instead of the old Microsoft document.all)
• meaningful values of class and id
• meaningful alt attributes on all images

and:

• scripts that work on links should extend the basic link functionality (think accessible popups)
• if a link makes no sense without a script, it shouldn’t be in the HTML (but be generated by JavaScript)
• use of forms or scripts as the only means of getting certain information is prohibited
• removing the focus rectangle on links is prohibited
• information offered in a closed format (think Word) should also be offered in an open format
• the semantics of many HTML elements are explicitly defined

New government websites must comply with these standards, as defined by the W3C. Also, existing government websites must comply by 2011.