Digital Experience Standards

San Diego County digital experience standards help to improve the experience of people who use our website and other digital services. For more information, please contact us at digital@sdcounty.ca.gov.

General usability

County digital content needs to follow widely understood best practices around meeting user needs. Many of these practices will have overlap with other standards. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​They include:

  • Meet user needs
  • Make decisions based on data
  • Stucture content and make it scannable
  • Prioritize information and make clear hierarchies
  • Use webpages over PDFs whenever possible
  • Avoid duplicating content on other County pages

Accessibility

County online services should be accessible to people with disabilities. The County is committed to its webpages meeting Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Mobile

County online services should be equally accessible on all devices. 

Readability

County online content needs to be written for the broadest possible audience. Material for general audiences should score 60 or above on the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease scale. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Search​​​​​​​

County digital content should follow practices that help users discover the content through search engines. At a minimum, content should:

  • Include meta descriptions.
  • Use headings with proper tags and hierarchy.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
  • Use language that the public typically uses when searching for the material.
  • Keep content current.
  • Keep content focused to the information people are seeking.

Multilingual

County digital content needs to support translation into the designated threshold languages. ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Branding

County websites and pages need to use the approved templates and follow logo guidelines.

Performance

County webpages should minimize page load so that they work well on a variety of devices and a range of connectivity. We currently do not have a specific measure to achieve, but things to consider:

  • Optimize for low-bandwidth connections
  • Cache for content delivery
  • Compress images and assets. Consider whether they are necessary.