Accessibility of this Site 2000 – 2014
Note: The following description of this website applies to the site prior to its migration to STC hosting, competed in August, 2015. Some statements about accessibility and implementation of WordPress may no longer apply.
On this page:
Website Accessibility Information
This site was originally designed in XHTML Strict with accessible features and considerations to give all visitors a similar browsing experience. Unfortunately many of those features are lost when converting the site to a WordPress site. Lost features include- Stylesheets that allow users to select higher or lower contrast views or preferred color background tints for low vision, color blindness, and dyslexia.
- Stylesheets that allow the user to switch font sizes or switch to viewing the site in text only.
- An aural stylesheet for screen readers and audio assistive technology.
- Sidebar navigation
- Bottom navigation, replaced with the WordPress Page Directory in the center sidebar
- On-page navigation, for example, in some browsers the on-page link goes to the first line below the referenced header.
Website Conventions
Cascading Style Sheets
The entire website has been converted from a table-heavy design to a W3C-validated CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) design and layout. Cascading style sheets (CSS) replace table-defined page layout and spacer graphics so that pages will load as fast as possible and information will be in a logical order. Tables are used for presenting data only. CSS separates site content from presentation and offers the following benefits:- Consistent look and feel across the entire site
- Smaller page size/lower bandwidth usage (less demand on servers)
- Better user experience (smaller page size leads to faster site loading)
- Better search engine optimization (increased information/markup ratio)
- Cross-browser compatibility (CSS is supported by most browsers)
- Future compatibility (valid, standard-compliant markup ensures reusable data)
- Better accessibility and usability (screen-readers, access keys, alternative formats)
- Better extensibility (i.e., printer-friendly, handheld-friendly)
Cookies
The website does not use "Session" cookies to track your visit. Information is not saved for future visits.Colors
The colors used in the website for links and change status flags were chosen using the:- Luminosity Colour Contrast Ratio Analyser [from Juicy Studio]
- Accessibility Color Wheel Version 1.0 by Giacomo Mazzocato.
- Colour Contrast Analyser [From the Paciello Group.]
Mobile Theme Requirements
The original website used two columns on the home page to show more sections near the top of the page. Because two columns are not supported in mobile themes, content split into two columns are now in one column. This may be problematic for CSS tables—more mobile use will let us know if the tables need to be changed to straight text. The HTML title= attribute has been removed from all links and images because the title= attribute hides things in mobile browsers. (See Title Attribute Removed.)Blaskan Browser Support
This site aims to comply with current standards on Web accessibility. To ensure that we meet or exceed the guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C-WAI) and WAI-ARIA, we continually review our site and modify pages to remove accessibility problems for people with disabilities. The Blaskan theme for WordPress is fully responsive and built for smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops and desktops. Accessibility is highly prioritized, following the WAI-ARIA specification as well as possible. For more information about the Blaskan theme see the Overview and Demo. The Blaskan theme works on many browsers. Among the supported browsers are- Firefox
- Safari
- Chrome
- Opera
- Internet Explorer 7+
- Android
- Mobile Safari (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch)
- Opera Mini
Navigation
Navigation features for screen readers include a "skip" link to jump to specific areas on a page. For people using audio assistive technology, there are skip links to go directly to the main content and to the navigation areas on the site. All links going to other websites will open in the current browser window. Use the Back button to return to this site. (See Target Window Attribute Removed) CSS is used to style the links with the following features:- Hyperlink, a navigation link to another page or place on a page. These links are blue in the body of the page and white in the navigation menu at the top.
- Active, a link that will be viewed when clicked on. These links have a different font color with an underscore. For links that are currently being viewed in the navigation menu, the active menu item will be identified by a different color.
- Visited, a link that has been seen, but is no longer open. It may have been visited during the current browsing session or it may be listed in the history of previous sessions. Content links have a gold font color in browsers that support this feature.
- Hover is the link state when the mouse moves over the link borders. Focus is the link state when the tab key moves to a link. As you move or tab from link to link, the current link is said to have focus. Hover and focus states help make links more prominent so users can tell which link is the current one. The hover state gives the links a distinctive font color and an underline seen by sighted users. The focus state is for users who use the keyboard to move between links. Focus uses the same font colors and text decoration (underline) as the hover state to give all users a similar browsing experience.