Robertdot Accessibility Policy

Some people have disabilities that force them to browse the web in a different manner than others. Some people choose to browse the web in an alternative manner. Therefore, I have done my best to make this site accessible to as wide of an audience as possible. The following accessibility policy outlines various methods that I have implemented to achieve this goal. If anything on this site seems inaccessible or could be approved upon, please let me know.

Access Keys

The following access keys are available throughout the site (use Control + an access key on Mac or Alt + an access key on windows):

• To skip to the content, use 1.
• To reach the blogs, use 2.
• To reach the archives, use 3.
• To reach the podcast page, use 4.
• To reach the projects page, use 5.
• To reach the portfolio page, use 6.
• To reach the about page, use 7.
• To reach the links page, use 8.
• To reach the contact page, use 9.
• To reach the settings, use 0.
• To reach the site map, use the minus key.
• To reach this page, use the equal key.
• To access the search, use the q key. To submit the search, use the f key.
• Most other forms can be sent by using the s key.

Tab Index

All site navigation links and fields in the search bar have a tab index of zero, which, according to the W3C, will cause them to navigated sequentually after any items with a positive tab index. All pages that exist for the form, like the contact, have form fields set to a tabindex of one, which ought to cause the form to focus before the navigation elements.

I used this scheme for lack of a better idea. If you have an idea on how to make the tabindex scheme more accessible, let me know.

Skip To Content

The first link on the page is a Skip to Content link will take you to the main content area, bypassing the navigation links. This will appear at the top right on the screen unless you are browsing with no stylesheet. At the end of the page (after the copyright info), the Skip to the Top link will take you back to the top of the page, skipping all the footer navigation.

Links

All links open in the same window. If you would like to open them in a new window, you may center click or command-click (depending on which operating system you use) to open a link in a new window or tab. I avoid using javascript: links at all costs. You should be able to follow all links to a new page. The only exception to this rule is to turn off Ajax inside of a form.

For visual browsers, I've tried to visually style external links with a special character beside them; however, this only applies to new user agents that support CSS 3.

Forms

AJAX is all the rage. It saves users a round-trip to the server, and that is nice. It also allows for me to do more advanced and redundant validation through PHP. The problem is that it is inaccessible for some folks. So, I designed the forms to degrade gracefully. If you don't want to or can't use AJAX, you can go to the settings to turn it off or use the inline link above every form that uses Ajax. If you don't have JavaScript at all or you turn off Ajax, the form will validate on the server.

Stylesheets

I have been vigilant about making the default stylesheet accessible. I used an elastic style, which means the design will scale if you zoom in or out with the browser's built-in zooming features. If, for some reason, you want to be at 100% zoom and you aren't sure if you are, use this rule as your guide: the header graphic will only exaclty fit at 100% zoom. Anything higher will cause it to tile and anything smaller will cause it to crop.

I've also included media types to display more suitable stylesheets depending on what you are using to view my site.

If that is not enough, you can also access the settings page to switch to a different stylesheet for screen and projection user agents.

Advertisements

I may show ads through Google Adwords. I have no control over how these are rendered. If they aren't accessible, there is little I can do. But, that might be better for you. If there is anything I can do to make them more friendly (other than remove them entirely), let me know.

Standards Compliance

I've gone to great lengths to make this site standards complaint. I've reviewed thousands of old blog posts multiple times to ensure good markup. Pages should be semantic, structured, valid HTML 4.0 Strict and I've made efforts to be Triple A Compliant to the WCAG 1.0 on non-password protected pages. If you find a page that doesn't validate, a page with crummy markup, a page that doesn't seem to be Triple A compliant, or a page that you feel is not accessible enough, please contact me and let me know what you think is wrong (and how you suggest I fix it, if you have a solution). I'm not making any promises to be 100% accessible on all mobile phones, however, until the market is a little less disparate.

On this site, I have included links to pages that are mirrored on my server (e.g. sites in my portfolio). I am making no claims about their level of accessibility. These sites are old or out of my control. They may be completely inaccessible. They are password protected and not considered a part of this site. Links to these pages are noted in the surrounding text.

The only part of the WCAG 1.0 that I'm sort of blatantly ignoring is 13.2, Provide metadata to add semantic information to pages and sites. It references using RDF and the Next and Previous type meta tags. I've seen some of the accessibility gurus use them, but, at this point, I don't understand how I can code for them without confusing the user. For example, if a user is looking at a set of posts filed under a tag, and clicks through, she might expect the meta next to be the next post in the list she saw on the tags page. Another user, however, might expect it to be the next chronological blog.

Another example would be the Archives page, which is paginated. One user might expect the next logical page to be page two of the archives where another might expect the podcast page to be next because it is next on the navigation menu.

So, to keep confusion to a minimum, and probably make the site more accessible, I'm ignoring those specific ideas presented in 13.2.

Inaccessible?

If you find a page that is not accessible or has bugs, please contact me so I can rectify the problem! If you feel my accessibility policy is incomplete, contact me so I can improve it.