Website accessibility is important to every business owner

We explain accessibility issues in our accessibility policy

Accessibility features of a good website

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We are committed to providing an accessible website that's simple to access and easy to navigate for all our website users.

We designed our accessible site to:

• employ an access key navigation list for keyboard only users.
• Provide user controlled screen display options at the bottom of every page, to comply with international standards and guidelines for website accessibility of the World Wide Web Consortium or W3C, an organization that develops protocols to ensure the long-term growth of the Web to be accessible by disabled users, or those who use assistive technology or other screen-reading software such as IBM — Accessibility Center
• For our visitors with vision difficulties, we recommend using the high contrast screen display style to improve visual accessibility. The access key for the high contrast display is alt+3. Alt+1 returns to the basic display style.
• optimize text legibility by using Arial as the standard and alternate stylesheet font style
• support Windows (98, 2000, NT, XP and ME), MAC (OS 8.5 and above) and Linux operating systems as well as portable devices
• eliminate horizontal scroll bars at any screen resolution (above 400px wide).
• provide images with an alternative text attribute and where appropriate, provide a long description of the image. (That is the [d] beside each graphic.)
• design page sessions that have no time limit
• use colors and graphics that don't affect users with color blindness
• use only Strict valid web page markup and provide a validation test on every page
• avoid the use of tables for page layout
• provide ongoing accessibility testing
• be continually improved for quality information content and user accessibility.

There are a number of web pages on this website that contain flash animations. These pages demonstrate presentation effects only and do not contain any important information that is not available on our accessible pages. Although these pages may still meet the minimum WAI accessibility requirements, SEO Designers recommend keyboard users or those sensitive to movement, to navigate to our accessible menu (alt+i). We also employ Javascript to provide additional information to our visitors. Users will note the Time, Day and Date (in the upper right corner) if they have Java scripting enabled on their current web browser. Java scripting enabled is also required for the user to quickly change the page presentation styles ( using access keys alt+1-5 ) and to see when the current page was last updated.

Why is accessibility important to you?

The Web is an increasingly important resource in many aspects of life: education, employment, government, commerce, health care, recreation, and more. It is essential that the Web be accessible in order to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with disabilities. An accessible Web can also help people with disabilities more actively participate in society. The Web offers the possibility of unprecedented access to information and interaction for many people with disabilities. That is, the accessibility barriers to print, audio, and visual media can be much more easily overcome through Web technologies.

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative

Hyperlinks note that may affect accessibility:

The extensive use of hyperlinks (within the text information) on all our html pages, may produce time consuming repetition of link title descriptions for audio browsers. We employ these hypertext links to provide focused or expanded information about the link phrase or word. When you first visit, all the link phrases have a slight dark blue link text. The important links are also underlined. As you visit a hyperlinked page, all the remaining links to that page turn dark grey or lose the underline, to show that you have already visited the page. Active links turn red with an underlined link text, when you focus or mouse-over the link. You may also wish to use an alternate screen display, to see all the links for better visibility, usability and accessibility.

In trying to achieve a balance between good accessibility and good presentation, we may have accidentally made it more difficult for specific user groups. If you encounter difficulty accessing web pages or navigating around our site, please let us know.

See also:

[ Accessible Navigation ] for detailed site navigation instructions.

Adobe Acrobat is not required to view and print documents on this website, unless the information files are labeled .pdf and now are archived in the /documents/ folder.

To read PDF documents with a screen reader, please visit the Access Adobe Website for useful tools and resources.

This website has been extensively tested using several web browsers, including Mozilla, Opera and Internet Explorer for accessibility compliance. The accessibility features of each web browser were used to confirm the accessibility features designed into this site. The testing was also extended to the services of persons with various disabilities. However, we recognize that new website accessibility technologies (and anything we missed), could still create accessibility or navigation difficulties for some of our visitors. Should you encounter any difficulty accessing or navigating our website, please inform us and we will attempt to rectify the cause of the problem as quickly as possible. We appreciate your comments and suggestions which could assist us to continually improve this business information site. We highly recommend that you check Website Accessibility policy search results from any of the search engines listed below. Simply press any search engine name.

Read also about Section 508 for U.S. Government website accessibility regulations. A business owner would also be interested in possible legal requirements for business website accessibility. Some jurisdictions already have specific website accessibility legislation.

For assistance in accessing our site or to provide comments/suggestions regarding our current site accessibility features, please contact us via email. Our designers actively promote business website accessibility.

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Every business web site needs a website accessibility policy

Although our site provides most of the content accessibility features required to meet AAA Content Accessibility Conformance, we will only claim level AA Content Accessibility. As technologies evolve, accessibility will be easier to achieve. We have seen the benefits and seo advantages that accessibility compliance can bring to how search engines rank a web site. You might like to read about understanding accessibility as well. It will help you get a good website for business.

Before you try to design an award winning website:

Should you find our accessible business information useful and wish to link directly to this web page, simply copy and paste the following link text onto any of your site's pages:

<a href="http://www.seowebsitesdesigners.com/accessible_web_pages/accessibility.html">Why is accessibility important?</a>

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