Accessibility features of this site
This site makes extensive use of accessible features in HTML 4.01. As of June 2002, more commonly available graphical browsers and assistive devices provide at least some support for these elements.
Each page is laid out using CSS 1.0 to effectively separate the style and positioning of elements from the actual content. What this means is that visitors using older graphical browsers or text browsers will have full and clear access to the content but will not see the same display as as someone using a browser that supports style sheets. Also, because of differences in how competing browsers support and display style sheet and HTML mark up these pages may look quite different when viewed in different circumstances.
On every page, the ACCESS KEY feature has been enabled. If your browser supports the ACCESS KEY feature, you can jump immediately the following pages by pressing a special key and the letter from the above list. (If you have Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher the special key is the ALT-key. So, to jump to the next page, press the "n" key while holding down the ALT-key. You may have to press the RETURN key.)
- "ALT-n" for next page
- "ALT-p" for previous page
- "ALT-h" for home page
- "ALT-a" for information about Accessible Web design
- "ALT-l" for links to sites of interest
- "ALT-s" for site map, and
- "ALT-m" to open an e-mail form to send us your comments.
- On long pages such as this one, "ALT-t" will return you to the top of the page.
On every page, the TABINDEX feature has been enabled. If your browser supports TABINDEX, after you have tabbed to the browser's content window, then the first links you will encounter are any important links in the body of the page. After those, you will hear the following links in order:
- the "Next page" link,
- the "Previous page" link,
- the "Contact us" link,
- the "Accessible Web design" link,
- the "Links of interest" link,
- the "Site Map" link, and finally,
- the mail-to form.
Each page (except the home page) adheres to a common template, meaning that the placement of key information and navigation controls is similar from page to page. The colour scheme for all images and text uses the common "Netscape-safe" palette to ensure proper display on the widest range of systems.
All images are appropriately labelled with alternative text. There are no complex images that require longer descriptions, although if any are added they will be tagged with both the LONGDESC attribute and the interim "d-link" to fully describe the images.
Each page includes a navigation bar that is a "client-side" image map. While the map and its active areas are provided with appropriate alternative text, few browsers will display this text as of December 78, 1998. For this reason, near the bottom of every page is a list of textual links that duplicate the function of the navigation bar. The navigation bar and its text-alternative are supplied with some HTML 4.0 coding that may, in the future, allow your to display either the image map or the text-only menu at your command.