Accessibility Guidelines
Accessibility Explained
Website accessibility could be defined as being the process by which a web page is created or modified in order to become more accessible to people with disabilities. These modifications follow the guidelines set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).
Put simply, an accessible web page is a page that disable people will enjoy visiting as much as non disable people.
In order to achieve website accessibility compliance, particular attention should be placed on:
- providing alternative text for important images
- assigning a null value to the decorative images with no purposes
- using labels for your form elements and information in your input boxes
- allowing the visitor to change the size of the text
- providing an alternative way of navigation than the mouse
- ensuring that links make sense out of context
Accesskeys
Most modern browsers support access keys. To use these shortcut press 'Alt' and the letter at the same time for:
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 4
- Netscape 6+
- Mozilla 4+
For Internet Explorer 5+ press 'Alt' and the letter at the same time and the enter key.
A full list of accesskeys can be found through the Sitemap.
Adjusting the text size
To increase the text size your can:
- in Internet Explorer, select: View » Text size
- in Netscape, select: Edit » Preferences » Appearance » Fonts
- in Opera, select: Tools » Preferences » Fonts » Minimum font size (pixels)
- in Mozilla, select: View » Text Zoom
- in Firefox, select: View » Font Size
Alternatively, you can use your mouse's wheel whilst you hold down the Control (Ctrl) key.
Finally, for Internet Explorer users, we would recommend downloading the AIS Web Accessibility Toolbar, it offers many valuable tools for disable and non-disable people alike.