Accessibility Statement

If you have any questions or comments about the accessibility of this site, feel free to email us at webmaster@carroll.org.

Access keys

Accesskeys are an alternative method for users to quickly bring focus to certain elements in a web page. The most notable of these elements is the hyperlink. The debate surrounding the effectiveness of accesskeys is well beyond the scope of this page, but we welcome you to learn more about accesskeys on your own.

Below is a list of the accesskeys used by this site. Activation of an accesskey is different among browsers and operating systems. Some of the more common methods are:

• On Windows. Internet Explorer 5+: Hold down the Alt key, and press the number or letter of the access key. Release both keys and press Enter.
• On Windows and Linux. Firefox 2.0+: Hold down the Alt Key and the Shift key, and press the access key.
• On Mac OS X hold down the Ctrl key and press the number or letter of the access key.

In order to avoid conflicts with shortcut key combinations found in many operating systems and software, we have limited our use of accesskeys to numerical characters.

• accesskey 0 will bring focus to the Home link.
• accesskey 1 will bring focus to the Skip to navigation link.
• accesskey 2 will bring focus to the Sitemap link.
• accesskey 3 will bring focus to the News link.
• accesskey 4 will bring focus to the Calendar link.
• accesskey 5 will bring focus to the Blog link.
• accesskey 6 will bring focus to the Search form field.

The Carroll Center has made every effort to avoid accesskey combinations that are reserved by other applications that may be running on your computer. Unfortunately, we cannot anticipate every combination, and some of our accesskeys may not work as anticipated for you.

Standards compliance

The Carroll Center has made every effort to use Standards Compliant XHTML 1.0 Transitional code on every page of this site. Each page has a link to validate the code. Since a majority of our pages are dynamically created, there may be some exceptions that slip by our validators. If you find any exceptions please let us know by emailing us at webmaster@carroll.org. Standards compliance also means the use of semantic markup. On our site, you will find extensive and proper use of all structural XHTML elements. This eliminates the chance that your access technology will misinterpret the intent or purpose of any given element on the page.

Navigation aids

The Carroll Center’s web site employs the use of Access Keys, as well as links to skip to main portions of every page. Pages with complex forms have tab orders specified to aid in the navigation of these forms. Each page consists of a hierarchical structure of headings, paragraphs and lists to make keyboard only navigation a breeze.

Links

Many of the hypertext links used on our site have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target. Great care is taken to make all linked text meaningful when taken out of context, such as listed in a Links List dialog box. This should make it easier to figure out the destination of a link when viewed in a list, such as a Links List Dialog Box in JAWS.

Images

All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics are rendered in the style sheet, and are not contained in the code of any page resulting in a much less “chatty” or verbose experience for screen reader users.

Visual design

This site completely separates presentation code from content, resulting in a much simplified user experience for those using assistive technology.

Those with low vision may choose to render this site in reverse contrast or in one of three text sizes using our site customization feature on the home page.

Plugin Technology

The Carroll Center has made every effort to limit its use of plugin technology such as JavaScript and Flash. When such technologies are employed, appropriate content is available for those without the plugin technology. We have chosen to server all video on our site using Windows Media Format. The Windows Media Player (external, not embedded) is the most accessible media player available at the time of this writing.

Validators

If you wish to test any page on the Carroll Center’s website for compliance with the Web Accessibility Initiative or Section 508, feel free to submit it to the Cynthia Says Validation Service.