Accessibility Statement

This is the official accessibility statement for independencestartshere.org. If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail us at info@independencestartshere.org.

File and Document Types

Throughout the site, we have linked to various documents for information and resources. Some of the documents are in Microsoft Word format and others in Adobe PDF . For the most part, these documents will open in a new browser window.

get Adobe Acrobat reader For the items in Adobe PDF format. You will need Adobe Reader installed on your computer to read the files. If you do not have Adobe Reader, you can download a free copy of Adobe Reader from the Adobe web site.

To view the PDF file as HTML or text, go to Adobe's PDF-to-HTML conversion tool.

You can download the documents to your hard drive by right clicking on the file name and choosing "save target as" from the menu.

For Microsoft Word documents, you'll need Microsoft Office or you can obtain a free compatible version at OpenOffice.org.

Feel free to contact us if you would like any of the documents in an alternative format.

Some files are compressed in a zip file format. To open the zip file, you will need a utility program such as IZARC or WinZip.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific pages or areas within a page by typing keys defined on the web site. In Windows, you can press ALT + an access key and then ENTER in Internet Explorer, ALT + an access key in Mozilla, or SHIFT + ESCAPE (release) and then an access key in Opera 7; for Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

All pages on this site define the following access keys:

Standards compliance

  1. Most pages use XHTML 1.0 Transitional and our Cascading Style Sheets validate as CSS2.
  2. The pages comply with all guidelines of the W3 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
  3. We make an attempt to label tables with captions and summaries to allow screen readers to render the table intelligently.

Navigation aids

  1. All pages have home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers and screen readers.
  2. We make an attempt to label tables with captions and summaries to allow screen readers to render the table intelligently.

Links

  1. Whenever possible, links are written in a manner that will make sense when read out of context. Many browsers (such as JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx, and Opera) can extract the list of links on a page and allow the user to browse the list separately from the page.
  2. There are no "javascript:" pseudo-links. All links can be followed in any browser, even if scripting is turned off.
  3. There are no links that open new windows without warning.

Images

All content images used include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.

Visual design

  1. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout. Even if your browser or browsing device does not support style sheets, the content of each page should still be readable.

Accessibility references

  1. W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
  2. W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
  3. W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer's guide to accessibility.
  4. U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

Accessibility software and services

  1. UsableNet, a service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines.
  2. HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
  3. Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
  4. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited demo is available.
  5. Lynx, a free text-only web browser.