I am pleased to announce the release of version 5 of the Opquast reference framework. This is the culmination of work that began at the start of the year and continued throughout Opquast Day, Opquast Cafés, online workshops, and countless exchanges between the Opquast team—notably the incredible Laurent Denis—and members of our ecosystem.
Here is a brief overview of what’s new:
For the first time, all the rules in version 4 of the reference framework released in 2020 have remained valid after five years. We did, however, decide to remove two rules concerning contextual information on links and the presence of a detectable syndication feed.
We also decided to merge two rules on the fact that tables should not be simulated.
Finally, we have added eight new rules, which are as follows:
- 14. Content does not misuse characters to simulate visual formatting (content)..
- 26. No information is displayed regarding the existence of a user account (personal data).
- 68. The origin of products is indicated (e-commerce).
- 96. Two-factor authentication procedures can be restarted (forms).
- 97. Fields that allow autocompletion are marked in the source code (forms).
- 98. Disabled buttons are not hidden from screen readers (forms).
- 216. The browser address bar display is not blocked.security).
- 217. The email domain is authenticated (security).
Please note that following intense lobbying by my colleague Estelle Pflieger, reference addresses now take the form:
https://checklists.opquast.com/en/digital-quality/[NUMBER], where NUMBER is the rule number. Thank you, Estelle, for your help and proofreading.
Another new development: since the end of August, when the 245 rules had already been selected and numbered, we decided to conduct a final collective review in order to evolve the website-oriented rules towards a broad digital application.
This is why the reference framework is changing its name to digital quality reference framework. Of course, this concept does not extend to data centers or infrastructure, but for anything related to applications, you may find it useful to review your productions in light of these rules or, better yet, to integrate them into your design and production processes.
The rules and objectives are licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA. For the fifth time and after 21 years of work, you have a digital resource made freely available by Opquast, on which its creators have spent a good part of their lives. I hope you will appreciate it for what it is worth. In any case, we have put a lot of energy and care into it.
All of this is available in French, English, and Spanish.
Thank you for helping to spread the word about this resource. Thank you to the workshop participants. Thank you to the Opquast team, who always work miracles. Finally, thank you to all our partners and everyone who trains with us and contributes to the development of the project.