Region Website of the Year Award Criteria

A subcommittee of the Electronic Communications Committee consisting of the ASPRS Webmaster, his/her staff, and three committee members will review all Region websites linked from the main ASPRS site using a scoring of 0 to 10 for the following categories. It is recognized that several of these criteria require subjective evaluation. The final award recommendations are provided to the Executive Director by February 1 of the year in which the citations are to be awarded.

Page Content (50%)

1. Quality and contemporary page content. (information conveyed is useful, accurate, informative, well written and timely/up to date - with obvious exception for archive material.)
2. Content. (a region’s web page should contain content pertinent to the regions operations, links to the ASPRS e-serv database should be used for officer contacts; forms should be linked from the National site; duplication of National and Regional content should be minimized; announcements, newsletters, notices of regional scholarships and awards should be present and prominent.)

Page Design (25%)

1. Ease of reading & color scheme. (use of white space; tasteful use color, e.g. avoid poorly contrasting text on color backgrounds)
2. Broken links should me minimized.
3. Navigation scheme. (ease of navigation -- get to most pages in three or fewer mouse clicks)
4. Page loading times. (demonstrate that efforts have been made to keep file sizes slimmed down, e.g. by using thumbnail images linked to larger versions)
5. ADA Compliance. (check for level 1 compliance using Bobby Check - http://bobby.cast.org/ - i.e. alternate text for images)
6. Maintain a standard look and feel across all pages in the website.

Regional Flavor (25%)

1. Unique content. (entertaining/fun aspects of web site)

Other considerations based on Electronic Communications Committee guidance notes:

• No horizontal scrolling.
• Page design with small monitors in mind. (Traditionally, pages designed for screen resolution of 640x480 were preferred but 800x600 is becoming widely accepted.)
• Eye linger test. (No important information should appear in the dead zone at the bottom of the screen - see diagram on guidance notes.)