6.1 Include this stuff at the top

View correlation with WAI checkpoints

Important for accessibility and validation, these constructs provide:

The version of HTML used
The language the page is written in
Useful information for search engines, browsing devices, and people
Useful navigation options

Specify a valid Document Type Definition (DTD):
- NICS currently use HTML 4.01 transitional (see example)
- List of valid DTD's from W3C
Identify the primary natural language:
- Add lang attribute to opening <HTML> declaration
- Choose from list of ISO language codes
Provide unique and meaningful titles for each page:
- Vital for accessibility - good for bookmarking
- The most unique thing should go first
Provide metadata:
- Computer understandable information about the page. Use standard and eGMS 2.0
- Navigation information (more on navigational metadata)
- links to external style sheets and alternative styles for different media types
  - print particularly useful for excluding all navigational elements etc. from print out

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

<html lang="en">

<head>
<title>6.1 Include this stuff at the top - HTML coding </title>

<meta name="description" content="Describe page and the scope of contents provided">

<meta name="keywords" content="Relevent keywords, Relevent Phrases, comma, Separated">

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">

<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true">

eGMS 2.0 metadata - view recommendation

<link rel="start" href="tips_intro.html">

<link rel="start" href="../index.html" /> <link rel="home" href="../index.html" /> <link rel="contents" href="../about/index.html" title="Contents: accessibility guidelines" /> <link rel="help" href="../about/accessibilitystatement.html" /> <link rel="author" href="mailto:jon.dodd@bunnyfoot.com" />  <link rel="prev" href="tips_page9.htm">

<link rel="contents" href="tips_contents.html" title="accessibility tips contents">

<link rel="next" href="tips_page11">

more on navigational metadata

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href="standard.css")

<style type="text/css" media="screen">@import url(hidefromoldbrowsers.css);</style>

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="Braille" href="braileversion.css")

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" href="printversion.css" />