Skills For life - Accessibility

Accessibility

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

All pages comply with priority 1 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
All pages validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional
The style sheets we use conform to W3C recommendations.

Throughout this web site you will find that:

We have provided a text equivalent for every non-text element, such as photos and graphics.
Information conveyed with colour is also available without colour for people who cannot differentiate between certain colours or who use devices that have non-colour or non-visual displays.
All pages can be read when style sheets are turned off or are not supported.
We will ensure that equivalents for dynamic content are updated when the dynamic content changes.
We have avoided content that causes the screen to flicker.
We have used the clearest and simplest language appropriate for a site's content.
We have only used html tables to tabulate data and they have not been used to structure or lay out pages.
We have ensured that pages are usable when scripts, applets, or other programmatic objects are turned off or not supported.

W3 accessibility guidelines, which explain the reasons behind each guideline.
W3 accessibility techniques, which explain how to implement each guideline.
W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer's guide to accessibility.
U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available.
Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user style sheets, image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.

Bobby, a free service to analyse web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.
HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.

WebAIM, a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
Designing More Usable Web Sites, a large list of additional resources.
Dive into Accessibility, an excellent practical guide to Web accessibility.