As reported by iHealthBeat.org, last year FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg “established a task force to develop recommendations on how to make the agency’s operations and decision-making processes more transparent .” Last week the FDA released FDA Basics, a site directly resulting from the efforts of the task force.
FDA Basics website
The site presents a general introduction to the mission and operations of the FDA, and enables people to stay informed of agency activities through both email updates and RSS feeds. Additionally, the site prominently presents a feedback form through which to submit suggestions and questions.
The site ably demonstrates how to write for the web. Most agency sites tend to be overly wordy and lacking in basic design sense. FDA Basics is aesthetically pleasing, and effectively “chunks” information for better web reading.
The site doesn’t validate against the W3C validator, but does not (at a glance) appear to be an accessibility nightmare. The information is well organized and headings are used effectively.
Other tools include the Apps.gov sanctioned “Add This” widget, and a database of FDA Acronyms and Abbreviations.