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Accessibility statement

This is the official accessibility statement for the Last Mile Directory web site.

 

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On a PC you can press ALT + an access key (for some browsers you may also need to hit the ENTER key to activate a link). On a Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

 

The following access keys are provided:

 

  • Access key S: Skip to content.
  • Access key 1: Home page.
  • Access key 0: Accessibility statement.

 

Standards compliance

As far as possible, we have tried to ensure that:

 

  1. all pages on this site are at least Bobby A approved, complying with all priority 1 guidelines; of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, most Priority 2 guidelines should be met as well
  2. all pages on this site validate as HTML 4.0 or XHTML 1.0 Transitional; the only exceptions to this are pages which contain Flash content, which have to use deprecated markup in order to function correctly in all browsers
  3. all pages on this site use CSS for layout and should degrade gracefully on non standards-compliant Web browsers
  4. all pages on this site use structured semantic markup: h1 tags are used for main titles, h2 tags for subtitles, and so on.

 

Links

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). As far as possible, 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 only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
  2. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page should still be 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 analyse 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 organisation dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
  2. Designing More Usable Web Sites, a large list of additional resources.
  3. Dive Into Accessibility, an excellent practical guide to web accessibility.