Access

By Peter~10 Jul 07~guide~

The Minim template has inbuilt accessibility features to help visitors enjoy the site. Please get in touch (access key 9) if you have any questions. You are free to alter and use this document on your site in any way you like.

AccessKeys

Some browsers allow jumping to certain links by pressing certain keys specified on the web site. On Windows, you can key in Alt + an access key; on Macintosh, you can key in Ctrl + an access key.

All Minim pages specify the following access keys:

Access key 1 - Home Page
Access key 4 - Search
Access key 9 - Contact/Feedback Form
Access key 0 - This accessibility document

Visuals

Minim uses cascading style sheets so that the content is less cluttered and easily readable with styling turned off.
Minim uses relative sized fonts, allowing users to use the "text size" option that visual browsers have.

Navigating

In the head of every page there is link rel = help, home, contents, previous, next and navigation to help people with text-only browsers get around. Users of some visual browsers may access these features too.
To prevent some users having lots of keys or buttons to press, main content is near the beginning. The page order is: breadcrumbs trail, search, skip to navigation link, main content, secondary navigation, main navigation.
All pages include search input (access key 4).
To help find things easily, the search results page includes the Site Map.
Labels are used on form inputs to increase the landing space and for easy tabbing.

Standards Adherence

Minim article templates try to use wherever possible W3C guidelines for semantics and structure. H1 tags are used for main headlines, H2 tags for main titles, H3 H4 and H5 tags for subtitles. This structure helps screen-reader users to scan the page more easily.
Minim pages are valid XHTML 1.0 Strict.

Recommended...

For a clearly written insight into accessibility, please visit Dive Into Accessibility. This document is based on the one on that site and its guidelines.