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ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT

The following borrows heavily from Mark Pilgrim’s accessibility statement, but is funnier.

Also, learn why I bother to have an accessibility statement and how this relates to me losing my virginity.

Access Keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the site. (On Windows, press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, press Control + an access key.)

Oblivio defines the following access keys:

Access key h
Home
Access key a
About
Access key c
Contact
Access key r
Archives
Access key s
Search
Access key e
Accessibility

Standards Compliance

Pretty much every page on this site meets the following web standards benchmarks:

  1. Bobby AAA approved, complying with all priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
  2. Section 508 approved, complying with every last morsel of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
  3. Validates as XHTML 1.0 and CSS2.
  4. Uses structured semantic markup. (For example, H2 tags are used for page headings and H3 tags are used for individual post titles. Thus JAWS users can skip between posts by typing ALT+INSERT+3.)

Navigation Aids

  1. As appropriate, each page has rel=previous, next, and home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers and screen readers. Netscape 6, Mozilla, and Opera 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. A site map is provived, and access to all archives is available through the archive page. Additionally, previous and next links follow each Road entry.
  3. All pages include a search box (access key 4).

Links

  1. Many links have title attributes that describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target or I decide to use this attribute to make a little joke.
  2. Whenever possible, links are written to make sense when read 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. One window is plenty. Plus it gets drafty.

Images

  1. All content images include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.

Visual Design

Oblivio uses cascading style sheets for visual layout. There is no turning back.

  1. The site stylesheet uses only relative font sizes, which are compatible with the user-specified “text size” option in visual browsers. So if you’re using, say, Internet Explorer, you can make your default text size larger under the View menu by selecting Text Size, Larger (or Largest). Additionally, a handy text-resizing tool is provided on every page.
  2. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets, or if you are using an older, non-standards-compliant browser, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility References

  1. W3 accessibility guidelines explains the reasons behind each guideline.
  2. W3 accessibility techniques explains how to implement each guideline.
  3. W3 accessibility checklist is a busy developer’s guide to accessibility.
  4. U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.
  5. 30 days to a more accessible weblog is a fabulous tutorial by Mark Pilgrim which explains these guidelines and how to implement them.

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.