Accessibility

Welcome to the accessibility area of the ASH website. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email us at enquiries@ash.org.uk.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control and access key.

All pages on this site define the following access keys:

• Access key 1 = Home Page
• Access key 2 = A to Z
• Access key 3 = Site Map
• Access key 4 = Advanced Search
• Access key 5 = Accessibility
• Access key 6 = Help
• Access key 7 = Change text size 
• Access key 8 = Text only (white on black)
• Access key 9 = Text only (black on red)
• Access key 0 = Text only (yellow on blue)
• Access key - = Text only (green on black)

Navigation aids

1. There is an A to Z and Site Map to show site structure.
2. The home page and all archive pages include a search box (access key 4).
3. You can change the text size to a larger text format.
4. You can change to a text only format in different colours.

Standards compliance

1. This site aims to be standard compliant with many tests used and lots of semantic markup e.g. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT INSERT 3.

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. Links are written to make sense out of context.

Images

1. All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
2. Complex images include LONGDESC attributes or inline descriptions to explain the significance of each image to non-visual readers.

Visual design

1. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
2. This site uses only relative font sizes, 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

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

Accessibility software

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

Accessibility services

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

Related resources

1. WebAIM, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
2. Designing More Usable Web Sites, a large list of additional resources.
3. Dive Into Accessibility, 30 days to a more accessible web site.