Accessibility
Accessibility is an important idea behind many web standards. Not only does this mean allowing the web to be used by people with disabilities, but also allowing web pages to be understood by people using browsers such as voice browsers that read web pages aloud to people with sight impairments, Braille browsers, hand-held browsers, teletext displays, and other unusual output devices.
Source: www.webstandards.org
Loud Mountain check accessibility conformity against: www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/ The level of comformity is determined on a per project basis.
Overview: www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag
A typical accessibility statement that will appear on your website
Navigation
A hidden ‘skip to content’ link has been added to enable users with screen readers to go directly to the content area of the page, bypassing the navigation.
Fonts
Some users may find that increasing the text size within their browser will make reading pages easier.
To change the text size
In Internet Explorer, click the View menu, then select Text Size and then choose larger or largest (the default is medium). Alternatively, hold down the Ctrl key and scroll the mouse wheel (if you have one). Please note that when the font is set to largest, the headings within some sections will wrap and may become difficult to read.
In Firefox, click the View menu, then select Text Size and then choose whether you would like to increase the size (increase) or decrease the size (decrease).
Alternatively, on most browsers hold down the Ctrl or Command key and at the same time, push the + or – key to increase or reduce the font respectively. Some browsers will increase the size of the whole website but this can be changed in the browser settings.
Links
Most links are text based. When an image is used for linking, then it is specified with an Alt (alternate) tag.
Wording of links are contextual where possible (for example, instead of ‘more’ or ‘click here’, this site will use ‘more about Dr Jones’ or ‘read about our equal opportunity policy’). This makes navigation easier for users browsing with screen readers.
Images
Only meaningful images have been supplied with text descriptions. This will assist screen readers and users who browse the internet with image display turned off.
Standard compliance
HTML and XHTML adhere to W3C standards.
This site conforms to W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, available athttp://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-WCAG20-20081211/ level A.
Screen Readers
Mac OS X (v10.5 and newer) by Apple includes a fully featured screen reader known as VoiceOver. It provides a wide variety of requested feature enhancements. These include a new high-speed, high-quality voice, plug-and-play support for refreshable Braille displays, international language support, an interactive built-in tutorial, and the NumPad Commander, which makes navigation easier for new Mac owners who previously used Windows screen readers.
Microsoft Windows XP or Vista, includes a very basic screen reader that will read parts of the screen out to you. However, due to a number of limitations with this feature, it is not particularly useful for a person who is totally blind. In this case you would still require a dedicated screen reader to use the computer system.
Common Screen Readers
The following are free:
- VoiceOver for Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard, free (built-in to the operating system).
More information at Voiceover - Non Visual Desktop Access (NVDA) for Windows, free.
Available from NVDA
Please visit Vision Australia for more information.
Conversion tools
The usage of PDFs has been avoided where possible. There are free PDF converters available.