ADA One is committed to ensuring that our website is accessible to everyone. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the accessibility of this site, please contact us, as we are continually striving to improve the experience for all of our visitors.

Standards compliance

  1. All pages on this site follow U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
  2. All pages on this site follow priorities 1 & 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
  3. All pages on this site should validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict.
  4. All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H1 is used to mark up principal page titles, H2 tags are used for sidebar titles, H2–H4 tags for content sub-headings. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+2. Opera users can skip sections by using "S" and "W" to cycle forwards and backwards respectively through headings.

Structural Markup

Web pages on the ADA One web site include 5 different areas:

  1. A header bar that includes a search form, selected basic navigation and internal page navigation,
  2. A main navigation area
  3. A main content area, including “breadcrumb” locational navigation
  4. A right "side bar" containing contextual navigation, and supplementary information
  5. A footer, containing links to our contact information and to other selected important documents for the site.

When CSS (Cascading Styles Sheet) are not applied to a document (or when using a screen reader), the 4 key areas are read in the above order.

Access Keys

This site does not use the accesskey attribute. Unfortunately, access keys often clash with keys set aside for use with other User Agents. (i.e. assistive technology). For this reason, we have decided to not set access keys.

Images

  1. Unless they are purely decorative items, all images used on this web site have suitable alt attributes. Decorative images have empty alt attributes.
  2. Content should be usable/accessible with images "off" (disabled).

Links

  1. Some links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already sufficiently describes the target.
  2. Links are written to make sense out of context.
  3. The first link in every document is a "To Content"; it is to skip directly to what is considered the main section of the page (the content).
  4. URLs are permanent whenever possible.

Forms

This website makes use of online forms. When they are implemented they use these accessibility methods:

  1. Form controls are appropriately and explicitly labeled.
  2. Form validation routine does not rely on client-side script.
  3. An alternate form of contact is always available: by phone, fax, or traditional mail.

Scripts

  1. Any client-side scripts used are non obtrusive.
  2. The content of this web site is usable without JavaScript support.

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.
  4. Any information conveyed through the use of color is also available without color (i.e. text based).

How to modify this site to fit your needs

These links explain the many ways you can make the web more accessible to you.

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.