If you have any questions or comments regarding content, accessibility, or any other area of the web site, contact us.
Standards Compliance
- Pages on this site are mostly Bobby A approved, complying with most Bobby guidelines. This is always a judgement call; many accessibility features can be measured, but many can not. Web Services has reviewed the guidelines and found most content to be compliant.
- Pages on this site are mostly WCAG A approved, complying with most priority 1 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Again, this is a judgement call; many guidelines are intentionally vague and can not be tested automatically. Web Services has reviewed the guidelines and found most content to be compliant.
- Pages on this site are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. Again, a judgement call. Web Services has reviewed the guidelines and found all content to be compliant.
- All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict. This is not a judgement call; a program can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid XHTML. For example, check the home page for XHTML validity.
- All pages on this site use structured semantic markup.
h1 elements are used for main titles, h2 and h3tags for subtitles.
Images
- All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
This site makes use of Phark Image Replacement. Phark Image Replacement allows the use of graphics to visually replace text within a document while still allowing screen readers access to the textual information. Browsers with images disabled and cascading style sheet support activated may miss some content. Alternatives to this method are being researched as of this writing.
Visual Design
- This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
- If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.
Accessibility References
Accessibility Software
- JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, 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.
Accessibility Services
- 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.
Related Resources
Recommended Reading on Accessibility
- Joe Clark: Building Accessible Websites. Every self-respecting designer needs a copy of this book on his or her desk. A well-written and informative look at designing web accessibility.
