Accessibility
We are committed to ensuring that our website is accessible to everyone.
If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the accessibility of this site, please contact us - we are continually striving to improve the experience for all of our visitors.
Standards compliance
- All pages on this site follow U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
- All pages on this site follow priorities 1 & 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
- All pages on this site validate as HTML 4.01 Strict.
- Unless they are purely decorative items, all images used on this web site have suitable alt attributes.
- Content should be usable/accessible with images "off" (disabled).
- The main navigation bar on this site uses an Image Replacement technique that makes the links accessible to non-visual browsers.
- Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target.
- Links are written to make sense out of context.
- URLs are permanent whenever possible.
- All form controls are appropriately and explicitly labeled.
- Form validation routine does not rely on client-side script.
- We are using non obtrusive client-side scripts.
- Content of this web site is usable without JavaScript support.
- This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
- This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
- If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.
- Any information conveyed through the use of color is also available without color (i.e. text based).
- 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.
- JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
- Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available.
- Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
- Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
- Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user stylesheets, image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.
- Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.
- 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.
- Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.
- WebAIM, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
- Designing More Usable Web Sites, a large list of additional resources.
