Accessibility Statement

In addition to making technical changes to our Web sites to provide greater accessibility, we test them with multiple assistive technologies - such as screen readers and screen enlarging software - to analyze and modify our pages. We also engage accessibility experts and people with disabilities to further test and modify our Web sites for optimal usability.

Although we continue to test and modify our Web sites for accessibility, there may be some legacy pages and pages developed by third-parties that are not fully compliant with our standards. If you would like further information about our accessibility standards or have problems accessing this Web site, please contact our Webmaster.

Standards Compliance

  1. All pages on this site is WCAG AAA approved, complying wih all priority 1, 2, and 3 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. All the guidelines have been evaluated and we belive that all these pages are in compliance.
  2. All pages on this site are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. All the guidelines have been reviewed and we believe that all these pages are in compliance.
  3. All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict.
  4. All pages on this site use structured semantic markup.

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 home page and all archive pages include a search box (access key 4).
  3. The following access keys are added to the appropriate links:
    1. home page
    2. skip navigation
    3. site map
    4. search facility on the site
    5. frequently asked questions (FAQ)
    6. help page/facility
    7. complaints procedure
    8. terms and conditions (including privacy statement)
    9. feedback 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 attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
  2. Complex images include LONGDESC attributes 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 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.