Accessibility
The Online Borders team has made every effort to ensure that the design of this web site conforms to the highest web standards for both usability and accessibility. The pages and templates produced by Online Borders pass all of the 'best practice' guidelines, tests and standards listed below.
The content however, is created by many editors, some of whom are volunteers. As such, Online Borders cannot guarantee that each (and every) page will pass these tests.
1. W3C XHTML Validation
The site is built using XHTML, a recent version of HTML. It is designed to move the standards developed for HTML forward so that devices (such as printers, phones, televisions or visual aides) can display web pages without needing the page translated.
XHTML is also compatible with older browser technologies so that users are not forced to upgrade their computers.
2. W3C CSS Validation
Cascading Style Sheets allow web pages to be designed separately from the content. This allows the page designer to create various 'versions' from the same content (i.e. for high visibility pages, or for text-only versions of the site).
Pages created with CSS files tend to be far smaller - and download quicker.
These two standards allow this web site to:
- be accessed by other technologies than just a web browser,
- be displayed in an understandable manner for all users,
- load quicker,
- display in text-only, and printer only versions,
- be easier to update,
- be cheaper to maintain.
3. W3C WAI-AAA and Bobby Approval
Triple A approval from the W3C is the strictest guidelines for creating accessible web pages. With the exception of the mapping and some other areas, the templates and pages produced by Online Borders meet this top (Priority 3) criteria - however there is not an official 'test'. It is a subjective review of the page by the page author.
Bobby is a similar set of guidelines by another organization - Watchfire. Bobby provides a validation tool that checks for some of the issues. The other points must be, again, checked by the author of the page.
By following these guidelines we are trying to make sure that all the information on Online Borders is available to everybody: not just the text, but the information contained in the images and other media.
Online Borders has also tried to help users who use alternative web readers by moving as many images as possible into the page background, and using only using necessary images. This will also benefit those users without broadband.
Our pages have been designed to use fonts (Arial and Verdana) that were specifically designed for reading text on a screen, and also common to all machines.
3. ICRA
Online Borders has been submitted to ICRA, "an international, independent organization that empowers the public, especially parents, to make informed decisions about electronic media by means of the open and objective labeling of content."
This allows both users and software (such as Net Nanny) to rate the content of our site in terms of suitability.
5. Access Keys
Access keys have been chosen to fit in with recommendations found on the web.
More details about the keys for this site can be found on the 'access keys' page.
This site uses three access keys. (What are access keys?)
- Home (1)
- Skip navigation (2)
- Access Key Information (0)
6. Adobe Acrobat
Online Borders keeps the use of Adobe Acrobat PDF files to a minimum. PDF files are intended only for documents that need to be printed (for example - application forms).
These documents are created by:
- Adobe Acrobat Version 6 - which has built in accessibility features,
- the 'Accessibility Plug-in' with Adobe Acrobat version 5.
For further details on Acrobat, PDF Files and accessibility please visit Access Adobe.
