What Every City Hall Website Has
Open a municipal government website and you will find, tucked into the footer, links labelled "Copyright," "Accessibility Policy," and "System Requirements." Most visitors never click them. Many never notice they exist.
Yet these pages are not there by accident. They are the product of deliberate planning shaped by freedom-of-information ordinances, JIS X 8341-3, and guidelines from the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. Under the principle of leaving no one behind, governments provide auxiliary pages so that every visitor can reach the information they need regardless of their environment.
Enterprise websites share the same structure. Legal departments draft link policies, IT departments specify supported browsers, and communications teams prepare site-wide orientation pages. These investments reduce customer-support costs while simultaneously signalling organisational credibility.
Does a personal product need none of this?
The Role of Six Pages
TokiStorage has built out six information pages, each serving a distinct purpose.
Copyright & Link Policy
A page that codifies rules on secondary use of content. "May I quote from this site?" "Do I need permission to link here?" Without explicit answers, users either shy away from quoting or reuse content without attribution. Both outcomes hinder healthy distribution. When the rules are stated plainly, users can share and cite with confidence.
Accessibility Policy
A page declaring which accessibility standards the site aspires to. It does not promise perfection; instead it honestly describes what has been addressed and where gaps remain. As discussed in "The Reach of Usability," accessibility is a continuous process, not a destination. Making that process visible is itself a statement that the site does not choose its users.
System Requirements
A page specifying which browsers and operating systems have been tested. Most complaints of the form "I opened it but it doesn't work" could be prevented if the visitor knew the supported environment in advance. Even when a visitor's setup falls outside the supported range, a clear statement lets them make an informed decision. This is one of the most cost-effective measures for preventing frustration.
Text Size & Colour Adjustments
A page guiding visitors through browser and OS features for customising the display. Rather than embedding a font-size toggle into the site itself, it points users to methods that work across their entire environment. This serves individual needs while also conveying a message: "We want you to use this site in a way that fits you."
RSS Guide
A page explaining what RSS feeds are and how to use them. For the technically inclined, RSS is self-explanatory. For everyone else, it is an unfamiliar concept. Describing it in plain language — "There is a mechanism that automatically delivers updates from this site" — gives people without a technical background another option for staying informed.
First-Time Visitor Guide
A page offering a map of the entire site. When a newcomer arrives at a site with over a hundred essays, multiple service pages, and legal disclosures, they need to know where to begin. This page prevents disorientation and doubles as a one-minute introduction to the site's philosophy.
Why a Personal Product Needs Them Too
"Governments and enterprises have legal obligations and social responsibilities — that's why they build these pages. A personal product doesn't need them." The objection sounds reasonable. Why spend time on something that is not legally required?
Because trust does not spring from obligation.
When a personal product is compared against an enterprise product, the first disadvantage is credibility. No brand recognition. No customer-support desk. No publicly listed company behind it. Visitors arrive carrying a quiet anxiety: "Is this service legitimate?"
Feature specs alone cannot answer that anxiety. "We preserve records for 1,000 years" is a claim the visitor has no way to verify. But "Here is our accessibility policy," "Here are the supported browsers," and "Here is our copyright policy" are pages the visitor can inspect with their own eyes.
Trust is measured by the safety net that exists for the moment something goes wrong. When a product works flawlessly, users do not think about trust. It is only when something falters that they ask, "Can I trust this service?" At that moment, a system-requirements page lets them check their own environment. An accessibility policy tells them about supported features. A first-time guide lets them revisit the basics.
Trust is whether a safety net exists when something goes wrong. That net must be visible before anything goes wrong.
As argued in "Writing Terms of Service on Trust," policies are not shields — they are instruments of relationship-building. Information guides work the same way. They are written not to protect users but to build a relationship with them.
Design Principles Borrowed from Government
Government web design embodies decades of accumulated thinking on "leaving no one behind."
JIS X 8341-3 is the Japanese Industrial Standard for web-content accessibility. It translates the international framework of WCAG 2.1 into a Japanese context, and public agencies are expected to conform. Contrast ratios, text sizes, alternative text, keyboard operability — these criteria improve the experience not only for people with disabilities but for every user.
Freedom-of-information ordinances require governments to disclose the information they hold. Information guides on a website are a digital extension of that spirit. Explaining how a site works is an act of transparency.
The Ministry's "Public Website Management Guidelines" specify the pages and operational structures that public sites should have. Copyright notices, privacy policies, sitemaps, system requirements — these are treated as necessities, not nice-to-haves.
As discussed in "Openism," TokiStorage embraces the principle of not hiding information. Government design philosophy resonates with that stance. Governments disclose information because the law demands it. TokiStorage discloses information because its philosophy demands it. The motivations differ, but both converge on the same destination: a state in which everyone can reach the information they need.
Adopting government design thinking in a personal product is not an imitation of scale. It is a translation of principles. Budgets and headcounts are incomparable, but the posture of imagining who might struggle and preparing a page for them can be implemented at any scale.
Trust as Layered Consideration
Each of the six information pages can be created in a few hours. The technical difficulty is low. There is no visual glamour. Yet the impression a visitor receives from a site that has them is fundamentally different from one that does not.
The difference lies not in the content of any single page but in the layering of consideration.
A copyright policy exists. An accessibility statement exists. System requirements exist. Display-adjustment guidance exists. An RSS explanation exists. A first-time visitor guide exists. Each layer is thin on its own, but stacked together they tell the visitor: "This site has already imagined the moments when you might need help." That feeling becomes trust.
As discussed in "The Corporate Site," a site's structure mirrors the philosophy of the people behind it. A full set of information guides is a non-verbal message: "The person running this product thinks carefully about the user's experience."
This also connects to the concept of discoverability explored in "Designing for Discoverability." Information guides signal comprehensiveness and credibility to search engines as well. A well-structured site is trusted by humans and algorithms alike.
If you are building a product meant to last a thousand years, it needs a thousand years' worth of consideration. That consideration begins not with a spectacular feature release but with a small link in the footer. Making the invisible foundation visible — that is the essence of an information guide.
Trust is an invisible foundation, and information guides make it visible. Consideration accumulates. Each layer may be thin, but together they form a bedrock.