If you have any questions or comments about the accessibility of this site, feel free to email me at f8dy@diveintomark.org.

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.

The home page and all archives define the following access keys:

Access key 1
Home page
Access key 2
Skip to main content
Access key 4
Search box
Access key 9
Feedback
Access key 0
Accessibility statement

Standards compliance

  1. The home page, projects page, statistics page, and all archives back to February 1, 2002 are Bobby AAA approved, complying with all priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
  2. The home page, projects page, and all archives back to February 1, 2002 are Section 508 approved, complying with all guidelines of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
  3. The home page, projects page, statistics page, all archives, and the photo gallery validate as HTML 4 Strict.
  4. The home page, projects page, statistics page, and all archives use structured semantic markup. For example, on pages with more than one day’s posts, H2 tags are used for dates, H3 tags for individual post titles. JAWS users can skip to the next day using ALT+INSERT+2, or the next post with ALT+INSERT+3.

Navigation aids

  1. All archive pages have rel=previous, next, up, and home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers and screen readers. 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). Opera 7 has similar functionality.
  2. The monthly archive pages include a calendar with links to each day’s posts. The table has a caption, a summary, and properly scoped header cells, to allow screen readers to render the calendar intelligently.
  3. The home page and all archive pages include a search box (access key 4). Advanced search options are also available.

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. Whever possible, links are written to make sense out of context. Many browsers (such as JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx, and Opera) can extract the list of links on a page and allow the user to browse the list, separately from the page.
  3. Link text is never duplicated; two links with the same link text always point to the same address.
  4. There are no “javascript:” pseudo-links. All links can be followed in any browser, even if scripting is turned off.
  5. There are no links that open new windows without warning.

Images

  1. All content images used in the home page and all archives include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
  2. Complex images (such as the photographs in my online photo albums) include LONGDESC attributes and links to text-only descriptions to explain each image to non-visual readers. (This is a work in progress.)

Visual design

This site and all its archives use cascading style sheets for visual layout.

  1. Internet Explorer has a limited text resizing feature (”View” menu, “Text Size”), but it only works with relative font sizes. A special stylesheet that uses relative font sizes is automatically served to visitors using Internet Explorer.
  2. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Acronyms and abbreviations

Due to its technical nature, this site makes use of many acronyms and abbreviations. I try to define each instance with the appropriate HTML tag (this process is automated in newer posts), but some older posts do not include them, and some older software does not support the HTML markup. Here is a complete list of all the acronyms and abbreviations you may see throughout this site:

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 and services

  1. Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines.
  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. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited demo is available.
  5. Lynx, a free text-only web browser.

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.
  3. Dive Into Accessibility, my free online book on web accessibility techniques. You can read it while you wait for the other two to be delivered.

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