Accessibility and Design Information
Design information
The design is based on the Observers design, originally found on Open Source Web Design. The design has been tweaked by replacing some of the pixel-based font sizes with ems to make it easier for accessibility.
The design was further modified by adding Project VII's Pop Menu magic and Breadcrumb Builder extensions. Both extensions are designed to be accessible.
Accessibility information
The site is intended to be at least WCAG AA, and perhaps AAA. The forms are likely WCAG A, and will continue to be updated to make them more accessible.
Here are the goals of the website:
- The website should be readable in all major screen readers, and should help people with disabilities access information quickly and easily.
- The website should seek to become compliant at the AA level and Section 508 compliance. For example, this page validates as both AA compliant and Section 508 compliant.
- The website should download relatively quickly to help our colleagues in other countries access information quickly.
- The website must be accessible to people using a variety of browsers, including Netscape 4.x and following, Internet Explorer, Opera, and Mozilla.
- Adobe Acrobat (PDF) files should be made as accessible as possible.
In order to accomplish these goals, we predominantly use the World Wide Web Consortium's guidelines on accessibility, with Bobby version 5 as a "quick check" during the redesign.
Browser Testing:
The site was tested in Internet Explorer 6 and 7 (RC1) for Windows, Opera 8 and 9.x, and Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and 2.0.