Accessibility

This is the official accessibility statement for the main Somerville College, University of  Oxford website. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch.

Standards compliance

All pages are WCAG AA approved, complying with all priority 1 and 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This is a judgement call; many guidelines are intentionally vague and can not be tested automatically. I have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.

All pages are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. Again, a judgement call. I have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.

Pages will conform to web standards / W3C compliant XHTML 1.0 Strict. This is not a judgement call; a program can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid XHTML. For example, check the home page for XHTML validity.

All pages use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+2.

Navigation aids

All tables have properly scoped header cells, to allow screen readers to render the calendar intelligently.

Links

Wherever possible, links are written to make sense out of context. Many browsers (such as JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx, and Opera) can extract the list of links on a page and allow the user to browse the list, separately from the page.

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

There are no pseudo-links. All links can be followed in any browser, even if scripting is turned off.

Images

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

Visual design

This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.

This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified “text size” option in visual browsers. For example, if you’re using Internet Explorer, you can make your default text size larger under the “View” menu, “Text Size”, “Larger” (or “Largest”).

If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility references

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
• Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
• Checklist of Checkpoints for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer’s guide to accessibility.
• Section 508 Guidelines for Web-based Intranet and Internet Information and Applications U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.
• 30 days to a more accessible weblog, Mark’s tutorial that explains these guidelines and how to implement them. It’s best to start at the beginning.

Accessibility software

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

Accessibility services

• HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
• Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.