Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing ‘access keys’ defined on the web site.

All pages on this site define the following access keys:

• Access key 1 – Go to the home page
• Access key 2 – Skip to main content of current page (for non-visual browsers)
• Access key 8 – View copyright information
• Access key 9 – Give feedback on the site
• Access key 0 – View accessibility statement

Here is how to use them in some common browsers:

• Firefox (2+): press ALT + SHIFT + access number.
• Opera (9.2+): press SHIFT + ESCAPE, then release both keys and then press the access number.
• Internet Explorer (7+): press ALT + access number, release and then press ENTER.

Standards compliance

1. All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. This can be verified for each page by clicking the ‘xhtml’ link at the very bottom. Apologies if you find a page that doesn’t validate! please let us know and we’ll fix it.
2. All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. For example, if the main heading of a page uses a H1 tag, then subheadings will use a lower level tag such as H2, H3, etc.
3. We’ve tried to ensure that the site complies with the following standards, although admittedly it does not yet fully comply with all of them (more work needed!):
   • Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
   • Section 508 Guidelines.

Navigation aids

1. All pages have rel=home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers. Netscape 6 and Mozilla users can also take advantage of this feature by selecting: View menu -> Show/Hide -> Site Navigation Bar -> Show Only As Needed (or Show Always).

Links

1. 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).
2. Most links are written to make sense out of context as well as in context.
3. Helper icons are appended to the end of the link text to indicate the effect of clicking certain links:
   • Links to external sites are indicated by:
   • Links which open in a new window are indicated by:

Images

1. Most images used on this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.

Visual design

1. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
2. This site uses relative font sizes as much as possible in order to be compatible with the user-specified “text size” option in visual browsers.
3. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility references

• Book: “Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.” – Author’s homepage at http://www.sensible.com.
• Website: “Dive Into Accessibility: 30 days to a more accessible web site.” – Homepage at http://diveintoaccessibility.org.