Accessibility statement

This is the official accessibility statement for Dive Into Accessibility. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

All pages on this site define the following access keys:

Access key 1
Home page
Access key 3
Sommaire
Access key 4
Search
Access key 8
Terms of use
Access key 9
Feedback
Access key 0
Accessibility statement

Standards compliance

  1. All pages on this site are Bobby AAA approved, complying with all priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
  2. All pages on this site are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
  3. All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict.
  4. All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+3.

Navigation aids

  1. All pages have rel=previous, next, up, and home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers. Netscape 6 and Mozilla users can also take advantage of this feature by selecting the View menu, Show/Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always).
  2. The tips are cross-referenced in several ways. You can browse the tips by person, by disability, by design principle, by assistive technology, and by publishing tool.
  3. The home page and all archive pages include a search box (access key 4). Advanced search options are available at the advanced search page.

Links

  1. Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target (such as the headline of an article).
  2. Links are written to make sense out of context.

Images

  1. All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT tags. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT tags.
  2. Complex images include LONGDESC tags or inline descriptions to explain the significance of each image to non-visual readers.

Visual design

  1. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
  2. This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
  3. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility references

  1. W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
  2. W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
  3. W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer's guide to accessibility.
  4. U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

Accessibility software

  1. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
  2. Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available.
  3. Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
  4. Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
  5. 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

  1. Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.
  2. HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
  3. Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
  4. Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.

Related resources

  1. WebAIM, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
  2. Designing More Usable Web Sites, a large list of additional resources.

Accessibility books I recommend

  1. Joe Clark: Building Accessible Websites. I tech-edited this book; it's excellent. Comprehensive but not overwhelming.
  2. Jim Thatcher and others: Constructing Accessible Web Sites. Less comprehensive than Joe's book, but goes into greater depth in the topics it covers. Gives screenshots of how various screen readers and alternative browsers interpret various tags and markup. Also has an amazing chapter on the current state of legal accessibility requirements.

 
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