Accessibility Statement
The following are the accessibility features for the State Council on Adapted Physical Education web site. By using the phrase "all pages," we mean that the following features apply to pages specifically designed for viewing on the Internet, not to those documents intended for printing or downloading. If you have any suggestions, concerns, or questions regarding this site, please send an email to webmaster@sc-ape.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.
All pages on this site which use the common site logo and Navigation Bar define the following access keys:
- Access key 1 - Home page
- Access key 3 - Table of contents
- Access key 4 - Navigation Bar
- Access key 8 - Terms of use
- Access key 9 - Feedback (email webmaster)
- Access key 0 - Accessibility statement
Standards compliance
- All pages on this site comply wih all priority 1 and 2 of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This is a judgement call; many guidelines are intentionally vague and cannot be tested automatically. All the guidelines have been reviewed and it is believed that all these pages are in compliance. Reasonable attempts have been made and will continue for having all pages comply with all priority 3 guidelines.
- All pages on this site comply with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. Again, a judgement call. All the guidelines have been reviewed and it is believed that all these pages are in compliance.
- All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. This is not a judgement call; a program can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid XHTML. For example, check the home page for XHTML validity.
- All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+3.
Navigation aids
- All pages have rel=start, last, previous, next, and home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers. Netscape 6 and 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).
- The beginning of each web page has a Skip Navigation link to go immediately to the Contents section of the page.
- Each page has a Highlights section with quick links to specific items within the Contents section of the page.
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).
- Links are written to make sense out of context.
Images
- All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
- Complex images include LONGDESC attributes or inline descriptions to explain the significance of each image to non-visual readers.
Visual design
- This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
- This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
- If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.
Accessibility references
- W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
- W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
- W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer's guide to accessibility.
- U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.
Accessibility software (free)
- Opera is a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, speech, user stylesheets, keyboard shortcuts, and image toggle. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems. The latest version is 9.
- Awesome Talkster is a visual browser with an emphasis on its text-to-speech features. It highlights text as it is read. Keyboard navigation is included. It requires Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. It does not run on Macintosh computers.
- Firefox is a visual browser with accessiblity features either included or available as plug-ins. It is claimed that Firefox 1.5 (Windows version) is "the first browser to meet US federal government requirements that software be easily accessible to users with physical impairments." Versions are available for Microsoft Windows and for Mac OS X.
- Internet Explorer is a visual browser with some accessibility features either included or available as plug-ins. The latest version is 6. Text-to-speech needs a plug-in, which may require Active X control, javascript, and/or use of Microsoft Agent. Some examples of programs are "IE Page-Reader Bar" and "Deskbot." Text must be highlighted and copied to the clipboard to enable it to be spoken by the plug-in. Version 7 is expected to have improved accessibility features.
Accessibility services
- Bobby is a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version also is available.
- HTML Validator is a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
- Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer is a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
- Lynx Viewer is a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.
Related resources
- WebAIM is a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
- Designing More Usable Web Sites has a large list of additional resources.
- Most documents on this site are in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF). A FREE Adobe Reader is available from Adobe for both PC and Mac computers.
Some documents may be in Microsoft Word format or as standard text files. These two formats are readable by most word processors regardless of type of computer. If you have difficulty accessing any documents on the SCAPE web site, please contact the Webmaster.
