Microsoft offers content labelling tool

Microsoft has released a free tool that lets website owners label the content on their site to give parents a way of checking whether it is suitable for children.

The free add-in for users of Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 lets you fix content labels created by ICRA, a non-profit organisation founded in early 1999 to protect children on the internet, on your site.

ICRA labels let you restrict access to a site based on your own criteria. It involves filling in a questionnaire that generates a labels which you add to your website, such as "adult content" or "gambling". This is not visible to surfers but can be read by filtering software.

According to the two companies, by providing direct and easy access from FrontPage to the ICRA labels they are strengthening their commitment to making the internet safer for children while respecting the rights of content providers.

Erik Rucker, group product manager for FrontPage at Microsoft, said: "With the new add-in, FrontPage users can label their sites quickly and easily using ICRA’s labelling system."

"This enables web authors to have their FrontPage sites be viewed and recognised by internet browsers that have been set to block unlabelled sites, while respecting people’s right to choose what kind of content they want to see when they go online."

Users of other web design tools can find information on adding the labels at the ICRA website. According to ICRA, millions of webpages are already labelled.