Keith W Bell
European supplier quality specialist

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Accessibility statement

This is the accessibility statement for www.kwbell.biz. If you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please email me at access[at]kwbell[dot]biz, as I am striving constantly to improve the experience for all visitors.

Policy

I intend that this site should be accessible to all visitors, including those with impaired vision or other disabilities.

  1. This page sets out some information about using the accessibility features I have built in to make the site usable by the broadest possible audience, regardless of the equipment or software used to access the web.
  2. I have also noted anything I think might pose a barrier to accessibility.
  3. If you are interested, you can find out about the design standards to which I built this site.
  4. Finally, I have listed some useful accessibility references and links to accessibility software.

If you have difficulty reading any part of this site, please let me know by sending an email to access[at]kwbell[dot]biz.

Accessibility features

Support for web browsers, internet devices and assistive technologies

The content of this web site should be accessible to any graphical or text browser, screen reader, Braille display, or other internet-enabled device (such as a handheld computer), but the presentation of the content may differ.

If you are using a modern, standards compliant, graphical web browser, you will see a fully styled presentation of the content. If you are using an older graphical browser that has poor support for World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, or a handheld device, you will still be served with the full content — but with a simpler, unstyled presentation.

If you are using a screen reader or a refreshable Braille display, the entire content of the site is available to you.

Navigation aids

At the top of every page is a “skip to site navigation” link for site visitors who use speech browsers or keyboard navigation who wish to jump past the page content (and past any links in the content) to the navigation menu. If you use the Tab and Shift + Tab keys to navigate forwards and backwards through links, you will find this is the first link in the tabbing order. Next in the tabbing order are links in the page text, followed by the site navigation menu. The navigation menu expands on those sections having more than one page (such as My services and My background) to include links to the other pages in the section.

(If you use the Opera browser, note that rather than using Tab and Shift + Tab to navigate through links, it uses the A and Q keys instead.)

As appropriate, each page has “relational” previous, next, up, and home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers. If you use Netscape 6+, Mozilla or Opera 7+, you can take advantage of this feature too:

  • in Netscape and Mozilla, select the View menu, Show/Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always);
  • In Opera, select View menu, Toolbars, Navigation.

If you use a recent version of one of the common screen readers, you can navigate using the following keystrokes:

  • H to cycle forwards through the headings;
  • Shift + H to cycle backwards through the headings;
  • 2 to navigate to the next Level 2 heading (or a number between 1 and 6 to navigate to the next heading on that level);
  • Shift + 2 to navigate to the previous Level 2 heading (or a number between 1 and 6 to navigate to the previous heading on that level);
  • Insert + F6 to provide a list of all headings.

If you use the Opera browser, you too can navigate headings using the following keys:

  • S to cycle forwards through the headings;
  • W to cycle backwards through the headings.

Text size

If you are using a visual browser, you can change the size of the text for more comfortable viewing.

  • If you are using Internet Explorer, you can make your default text size larger under the View menu by selecting Text Size, Larger (or Largest).
  • Other browsers have similar text size options under their View menus. In the Opera browser’s View menu you will find a Zoom option, allowing you to increase or decrease the text size. Opera’s zoom option actually “zooms” the whole page, scaling images up or down in size as well as the text.
  • If you have a wheel mouse, some browsers (including Internet Explorer) allow you to increase or decrease the text size by holding down the Ctrl key while you move the wheel up or down.

Links

Many links have title attributes that describe the link destination in greater detail. If you use a screen reader, you may wish to adjust its verbosity settings to take advantage of this feature.

Link text is never duplicated; two links with the same link text always point to the same address.

There are no links that open new windows without warning.

Potential accessibility barriers

Access keys, or the lack of them

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. The idea behind these access keys is admirable, but it is next to impossible to define key combinations that will not conflict with combinations already defined by browsers or assistive technology software that site visitors might be using. This is described in a study of access keys and keystrokes conducted by Canadian firm of web accessibility specialists. For that reason, I have not defined access keys on this site. If you think my judgment is flawed, please contact me and tell me why.

Tabindexes, or the lack of them

It is possible to control the tabbing order using an attribute in the HTML code for a web page called tabindex. This can be a useful feature, but I have not used it on this site. My reasons are that, first of all, I think it is unnecessary in this case: the “natural” tabbing order already seems perfectly appropriate. Second, tabindex is not without its problems. In relatively recent versions of some browsers — Netscape 6, for example — if tabindex is applied to any links on a page, then only those links will be selected when tabbing. All other links are ignored, and it is impossible to tab away from tabindexed links. Thanks to a browser idiosyncracy, a feature that was introduced to assist accessibility becomes a hindrance to usability.

Design standards and compliance

I designed this site to meet the standards and benchmarks set out below.

  1. In developing the site, I followed the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and all pages meet at least Conformance Level Double-A. (See the note below.)
  2. Also, all pages comply with all of the US Federal Government Section 508 Standards. (See the note below.)
  3. All pages are built with valid XHTML 1.0 Strict. You may check the XHTML validation status of this page, for example.
  4. Visual layout and presentation of pages is separate from their structure and is determined using valid CSS2. You may check the CSS validation status of this page, for example.
  5. All pages use structured, semantic markup. h1, h2 and h3 tags are used for headings and subheadings; paragraphs, lists, etc. are also marked up appropriately. This makes the structure of pages clearer and easier to navigate for non-disabled people as well as those with a range of disabilities.
  6. Some minor enhancements are provided by JavaScript using W3C Document Object Model core methods, for those browsers that support it. However, the site does not depend on JavaScript for any of its functionality or content, so it is fully accessible if scripting is disabled or not supported by your browser.

Note

I have assessed compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and Section 508 requirements by a combination of automated testing using the Hermish validator, and by human verification against the published checkpoints and guidelines.

Accessibility references

  1. W3C accessibility guidelines, which explain the reasons behind each guideline. http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10
  2. W3C accessibility techniques, which explain how to implement each guideline. http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS
  3. W3C accessibility checklist, a busy developer’s guide to accessibility. http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html
  4. US Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines. http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm
  5. BBC My Web My Way explains the many ways you can change your browser, computer, keyboard and mouse settings to make the web more accessible for you. http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility

Accessibility software

  1. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available. http://www.freedomscientific.com/fs_downloads/jaws.asp
  2. Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available. http://www-3.ibm.com/able/hpr.html
  3. Lynx, a free text-only web browser useful for blind users with refreshable Braille displays. http://lynx.browser.org
  4. Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth. http://links.sourceforge.net
  5. Opera, a free visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user stylesheets, image toggle. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems. http://www.opera.com

Accessibility: the reason why

“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.” — Sir Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director & inventor of the World Wide Web