Accessibility Statement

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

This is the official Web accessibility statement for the Valley Free Radio Website. We have worked to make the Website accessible to all audiences, including those with visual impairments or other diabilities.

It is our goal to create a model of usable and accessible design for the elderly and the visually impaired, considerations which many web designers neglect.

Page Contents

Guidelines

  1. Most pages on this site have passed the Cynthia Says web page accessibility test. This is always a judgement call; many accessibility features can be measured, but many can not. We have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.
  2. Most pages on this site are WCAG AAA approved, complying wih all priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Again, this is a judgement call; many guidelines are intentionally vague and can not be tested automatically. We have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.
  3. Most pages on this site are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. Again, this is a judgement call. We have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.

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Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site.
Windows users:

  • Mozilla Firefox & Netscape: Press ALT + an access key.
  • Microsoft Internet Explorer: Press ALT + an access key + ENTER

Macintosh users: press Control + an access key.
All pages on this site define the following access keys:

  • Access key h - Home page
  • Access key 4 - Search
  • Access key 9 - Feedback
  • Access key 0 - Accessibility statement

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Structural and Visual Design

  1. We made one accessible version of a website, rather than two (or more) separate sites that need to be maintained. Studies show that users have learned not to trust secondary versions. They are too often left wanting.
  2. This site uses cascading style sheets (CSS) to control the visual presentation and separate it from the content.
  3. This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified “text size” option in visual browsers.
  4. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable, though may affect the functionality of the site.

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  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.
  3. All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.

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Accessibility References

  1. W3 Auxiliary Benefits of Accessible Web Design.
  2. W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
  3. W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
  4. W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer’s guide to accessibility.
  5. U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.
  6. WebAIM, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
  7. WebXACT (formerly Bobby), a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.
  8. HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
  9. Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.

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