What You're Being Marked On — AS91893

Your website is assessed against AS91893 — Use advanced techniques to develop a digital media outcome.

• NCEA Level 2
• 4 credits
• Internal — marked in school, not in an exam

This note tells you what the marker is looking for, so you can put your effort in the right places.

Read it before you start building, not after.

Key words

Word	What it means
Standard	The official document listing what you must do to pass.
Achieved / Merit / Excellence	The three grade levels.
Evidence	The proof you did something. If it isn't recorded, it doesn't count.
End-users	The people your site is actually for.
Implications	The wider effects of your choices — on people, privacy, the law.
Iteration	Build, test, improve, repeat — and show that you did.
Conventions	The normal, expected ways of doing things on the web.

The most important thing on this page

AS91893 is a digital media standard.

That means it marks the part users see and interact with: layout, styling, media, accessibility, usability, and testing.

It does not mark your Python code. Flask routes and SQLite queries are programming, and programming has its own separate standard (AS91896).

If you spend three weeks building a clever database and one afternoon on the website, you will get a low grade for a lot of work.

The database is plumbing. It makes the site function, but it isn't what's being assessed here. Put your effort into the website itself.

If you want your programming work assessed, we can look at doing that under the programming standard — but it needs its own separate evidence. The same work can't count twice.

What you have to do — Achieved

What the standard asks	What that means for you
Use appropriate tools and techniques for the purpose and end-users	Choose HTML, CSS and JS deliberately and be able to say why. Make it work on the devices your users actually have. (Notes 02–04)
Use relevant conventions for the media type	Do web things the normal web way: semantic HTML, navigation that's the same on every page, responsive layout, accessibility, tidy static/ folder. (Notes 01–05)
Apply data integrity and testing procedures	Test it and write down what you tested and what happened. Run your HTML and CSS through the W3C validators. Check your forms. Check your links.
Explain relevant implications	Write about accessibility, privacy, copyright/licensing and usability — for your site specifically.
Use advanced techniques	See the list further down. You must clear this bar even for Achieved.

Getting Merit

Merit is Achieved, plus you used it to make the outcome better.

Merit criterion	What it looks like
Testing information used to improve quality	You found problems in testing and fixed them — and your log shows the before and after.
Conventions applied to improve quality	You didn't just tick "has alt text". You made real accessibility and responsive choices that improved the site.
Implications addressed	You didn't just describe accessibility — you actually made it accessible. You didn't just mention licensing — you actually licensed your images properly.

The pattern: Achieved describes, Merit acts.

Getting Excellence

Excellence is Merit, plus two things:

Excellence criterion	What it looks like
Iterative improvement throughout	Documented cycles of build → test → improve, across the whole project. Not one round of fixes at the end.
Efficient tools and techniques in production	You worked smart, not just hard. See the table below.

The "efficient techniques" the standard actually names

This is your clearest route to Excellence, because the standard lists these by name and this unit teaches most of them.

Technique	How you show it
Using stylesheets	An external CSS file. CSS custom properties (variables) so your colours and spacing are defined once.
Templates / master pages	Jinja2 template inheritance — one base.html with {% block %} regions that your other pages extend. This is a direct match.
Reusing objects and styles	Reusable classes like .card and .btn. Jinja2 includes for repeated bits.
Commenting	Comments in your HTML, CSS and JS explaining why, not what.
Character formatting controls	Deliberate typography — a consistent type scale, weights, line spacing.
HTML/CSS validation	Run pages through the W3C HTML validator and CSS validator, and fix what it finds. Screenshot the clean result.
Optimising media	Compress your images. Use sensible formats (WebP). Don't ship a 4MB photo as a thumbnail.
Managing assets	An organised static/ folder — static/css/, static/img/, static/js/. Not everything dumped in one pile.

Tick as many of these as you can. Each one is cheap to do and each one is evidence.

"Advanced techniques" — the bar you must clear

The standard requires advanced techniques even for Achieved. The easiest ones to evidence in this project:

• Using a third-party library. Pico.css, Bootstrap, or htmx (Note 06). This is the single easiest one to demonstrate cleanly — you're already doing it.
• Creating or customising scripts. Your own CSS and JavaScript (Note 07), or customising a framework's variables.
• Combining steps to enhance elements. Layered responsive layout techniques — Grid plus container queries plus clamp() working together.
• Composite effects. Transitions, transforms, gradients and shadows combined deliberately.

The two things students most often lose marks on

These aren't about your website's quality. They're about proof. Good websites get low grades when this is missing.

1. You need a testing log

"Testing procedures" (Achieved) and "iterative improvement" (Excellence) both need a visible record. If you tested but didn't write it down, the marker cannot see it, and it doesn't count.

Keep a simple table from day one:

Date	What I tested	How	Result	What I changed
12 Aug	Nav bar on phone	Chrome DevTools, 375px	Links overlapped the logo	Added flex-wrap: wrap to .site-nav
12 Aug	HTML validation, index.html	validator.w3.org	3 errors — unclosed <div>	Fixed all three, re-ran, clean

Five minutes at the end of each lesson. That's it. That table is worth real marks.

2. You need to write about implications

"Explaining relevant implications" is an Achieved requirement, and it needs actual written work. It won't happen by accident.

Pick three or four that genuinely apply to your site:

Implication	Questions to answer for your site
Accessibility	Can someone using a screen reader use it? Is the colour contrast good enough? Can you navigate it with only a keyboard?
Privacy	What personal data do you collect? Where does it go? Do users know? Do you actually need it?
Copyright / licensing	Where did every image and font come from? Are you legally allowed to use them? Have you credited them?
Usability	Can your intended users find what they need? Have you tested that with an actual person?

For each one: explain it (what it is, why it matters here), then show what you did about it (that's the Merit part).

Your turn

Set these up in your project folder now, before you start building:

1. A testing-log.md file with the table headings above.
2. An implications.md file with a heading for each implication you'll cover.
3. A dev-journal.md — or use your Git commit history — recording what you changed and why.

They take ten minutes to create and they're the difference between a good website and a good grade.

Check yourself

• I know AS91893 marks the website, not the Python.
• I know I have to clear the "advanced techniques" bar, and I know which one I'm using.
• I've started a testing log and I'm actually filling it in.
• I've picked my implications and started writing about them.
• I'm keeping a record of changes (journal or commits).
• I know the difference between Achieved (describe) and Merit (act on it).
• I've validated my HTML and CSS at least once.
• My static/ folder is organised, not a dumping ground.

The official documents

You don't need to read these to pass, but they're the actual source if you want to check something.

• AS91893 — the standard itself (NZQA PDF)
• Annotated exemplars — real student work with the marker's comments. Genuinely worth twenty minutes. Seeing what an Excellence submission looks like is more useful than reading the criteria.
• Level 2 Digital Technologies resources (TKI)
• W3C HTML validator and CSS validator — bookmark both.