Accessibility Statement

Standards Compliance

  1. All static pages follow U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
  2. All static pages follow priorities 1 & 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
  3. All static pages validate as HTML 4.01 Transitional.
  4. All static pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 and H4 tags for subtitles.

Structural Markup

Web pages on Digital Commons @ IWU include 4 different areas:

  1. A header bar that includes the main navigation,
  2. A main content area,
  3. A side bar,
  4. A footer.

When CSS (Cascading Styles Sheet) are not applied to a document (or when using a screen reader), the 4 areas are read in the above order.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

All pages on this site define the following access keys:

Access key 1
Digital Commons @ IWU Home page
Access key 2
The Berkeley Electronic Press Home Page
Access key 3
My Account
Access key 4
Search
Access key 0
Accessibility Statement

Additional navigation aids

Search results can be navigated by using the following access keys:

Access key f
First results page
Access key n
Next results page
Access key p
Previous results page
Access key l
Last results page

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Images

  1. Unless they are purely decorative items, all images used on this web site have suitable alt attributes.
  2. Content should be usable/accessible with images "off" (disabled).
  3. The main navigation bar on this site uses an Image Replacement technique that makes the links accessible to non-visual browsers.

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Links

  1. Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target.
  2. Links are written to make sense out of context.
  3. URLs are permanent whenever possible.

Forms

  1. All form controls are appropriately and explicitly labeled.

Scripts

  1. We are using non obtrusive client-side scripts.
  2. Content of this web site is usable without JavaScript support.

Pop up Windows

  1. In visual browsers, the title attribute of links to external resources says "opens in new window".
  2. Browsers with Popup Blockers should be able to access these external documents.

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Visual design

  1. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
  2. This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
  3. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.
  4. Any information conveyed through the use of color is also available without color (i.e. text based).

Accessibility references

  1. W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
  2. U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

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