accessibility
Using the accessibility aids within this site
Standards compliance
This site complies with all priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and is Bobby AAA approved. It has also been tested by the automated accessibility tester at Cynthia Says. LIFT - NN/g edition was used during the building of this site to verify its accessibility features.
The code used to create the site validates as HTML 4 Transitional, and the CSS has also been validated.
The pages use structured semantic markup where necessary. JAWS users can skip through the header hierarchy by using ALT+INSERT+2, ALT+INSERT+3 and so on.
Access keys
Most modern browsers support jumping to specific links by typing an 'access key'. On Windows, you do this by pressing ALT + the access key; on Macintosh, you press Control + the access key.
The following access keys are used on this site:
- Access key 1
- Home page
- Access key 2
- Skip navigation
- Access key 9
- Contact Information
- Access key 0
- Accessibility features (this page)
Note: Netscape Navigator 6.0 does not support 'accesskey' functionality.
Links
Links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target.
Wherever possible, links are written to make sense out of context. Many browsers (such as JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx, and Opera) can extract the list of links on a page and allow the user to browse the list separately from the page.
Link text is never duplicated; two links with the same link text always point to the same address.
Some links on the site will open a new browser window (when the page being linked to is on an external site). A new window is never opened without a warning in the 'title' attribute of the link.
You can use the 'tab' key of your keyboard to jump from link to link. 'Tab index' tags are used to allow this to happen in a logical way.
Note: Netscape Navigator 6.0 does not support 'tab index' functionality.
Images
Much of the site is of necessity based around images. These have been made as accessible as possible in the following ways.
- All content images used on every page throughout the site include descriptive ALT attributes. Decorative or functional graphics include null ALT attributes.
- Occasionally, complex images may have LONGDESC attributes and links to text-only descriptions to explain each image to non-visual readers. The text-only description can be accessed by using the 'd' link immediately after the image.
Visual design
The site uses a cascading style sheet for visual layout. No tables are used for layout on this site.
The stylesheet uses relative font sizes and is written to display pages correctly in most commonly-used modern browsers (except Netscape 4).
In Netscape 4, earlier browsers, or browsing devices that do not support stylesheets at all, the content of every page is still readable and makes linear sense.
Accessibility references
- W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
- W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
- W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer's guide to accessibility.
- U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.
- There is an excellent accessibility resource created by Mark Pilgrim at the Dive Into Accessibility project at his site Dive Into Mark.
Accessibility software and services
- Bobby, a free service to analyse web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines.
- HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
- Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
- JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited demo is available.
- Lynx, a free text-only web browser.
Feedback
I hope that this site is accessible and usable to everyone who visits it. If you have had difficulty in any aspect of the user experience, or if you have any comments, suggestions or complaints about the site's accessibility, please contact Jon at wayouteast. We will be happy to incorporate improvements to the site as a result of these suggestions.