Required footer elements for official UW websites

When building an official University of Washington website or webpage, the footer must include specific elements to comply with established university privacy and security policies, and forthcoming accessibility policies. There are two required elements: the copyright statement and required links. Below we provide both the elements and code examples for including the elements on your website.

Note: If you are using the UW WordPress theme, UW Drupal theme, or one of our accessible templates, these elements are already included in the footer. If you create a child theme or modify templates, do not remove or alter these required elements.

Copyright statement

Include the copyright mark, the current year, and “University of Washington” in a prominent location within the footer of your website.

For example, the following code:

<p>&copy; 2026 University of Washington</p>

will produce the desired result:

© 2026 University of Washington

Required links

The footer must include required links that point to specific destinations for compliance with university policies. While the Web Strategy team recommends to place these links in an unordered list displayed horizontally below the copyright statement, the website builder is free to place them in any style that fits the design of their site but in a location that is easily identified by the end user. The following are the required links and their destinations:

• Accessibility → https://www.washington.edu/accessibility/
• Contact Us → https://www.washington.edu/contact/
• Rules Docket → https://www.washington.edu/rules/wac/
• Privacy → https://www.washington.edu/online/privacy/
• Terms → https://www.washington.edu/online/terms/

Optional links

In addition to the required links, you may also include these links to university resources:

• Campus Safety → https://www.washington.edu/safety/
• Jobs → https://www.washington.edu/jobs/
• My UW → https://my.uw.edu/
• Newsletter → https://www.washington.edu/newsletter/

Departments may add their own links as long as they do not override or conflict with the required links (e.g., do not replace the official Privacy Policy with a unit-specific one).

Code snippet

Here is an example HTML and CSS snippet you can copy and paste into your website:

<style>
	footer{
		padding:1em;
		text-align:center;
	}
	.footer-links{
		list-style:none;
		padding:0;
		margin:0;
		display:flex;
		justify-content:center;
		gap:1em;
	}
	.footer-links li{
		display:inline;
	}
</style>
<footer role="contentinfo" aria-label="University of Washington site footer">
	<p>&copy; 2026 University of Washington</p>
	<ul class="footer-links">
		<li><a href="https://www.washington.edu/accessibility/">Accessibility</a></li>
		<li><a href="https://www.washington.edu/contact/">Contact Us</a></li>
		<li><a href="https://www.washington.edu/rules/wac/">Rules Docket</a></li>
		<li><a href="https://www.washington.edu/online/privacy/">Privacy</a></li>
		<li><a href="https://www.washington.edu/online/terms/">Terms</a></li>
	</ul>
<footer>

which will produce the following output: