This document describes the features employed by this website to aid users with special needs. If you have any questions or comments about this site, please contact us. The University maintains a campus wide policy concerning accessible web pages, last updated on 7/29/2003. It can be found at the UNT Web Accessibility Page.
Accessibility Features
Access keys
This site does not employ access keys so as to not unintentionally override any default keys commonly used by operating systems and other programs running on the user's computer.
Acronyms and Abbreviations
This site makes use of abbreviations. These are defined on each page. Mousing over, or focusing on the first instance of an abbreviation will provide an explanation.
Images
All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Decorative graphics have been relegated to an external style sheet.
Links
- Some external links have
titleattributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text within the anchor tags already fully describes the target (such as the headline of an article). - An attempt has been made to author link texts in such a manner that they make sense out of context.
- All links are negotiable via the tab key. The default tab order has not been manipulated.
- Users of Opera, Mozilla, and other standards compliant browsers can negotiate portions of the site's content via the
Link Element.
Navigating the Site
This site employs a Site Map and a targeted adoption of the University's Google Search for your convenience.
Standards compliance
- While some guidelines are subjective, pages on this site are, in most cases, WCAG AAA approved, complying with priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
- Pages on this site comply with all applicable U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
- All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
- All pages on this site employ a degree of structured semantic markup. Heading Tags delineate sections of content and when possible, appropriate tags have been employed to describe the content. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+5.
Visual design
- This site uses cascading style sheets for aspects of its visual and presentational layout.
- This site uses both relative and absolute font sizes.
- Absolute sizing has been employed by the main navigation bar to accommodate the visual design of the page. Currently, Internet Explorer is the only major browser that will not override these settings unless you, the user make it a point to alter styles.
- If you are concerned about the sizing of this text, coloring, or any other visual aspect of this site's presentation you may override these styles with your own style sheets, turn of styles completely, or possibly use one of the accessibility features and add-ons provided by Mozilla based and Opera browsers.
Linked Documents
Portions of this site link to PDF Documents. These documents are primarily intended for printing. While screenreaders and some user agents may do an adequate job of reading the content, it is possible that the materials in these documents may remain unaccessible to you. If this is the case, please contact us directly.
External Accessibility Resources
Accessibility references
- W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
- U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.
- State of Texas Department of Information Resources SRRPUB11 World Wide Web Design Standards and Coding Guidelines. Web Accessibility and Usability Section.
Accessibility software
It is important to note that no software is yet capable of rendering web-based content completely suitable to web designers and all of their prospective users. In addition, there is no consensus among the major software application vendors on how content should correctly render. What follows is a list of applications that you may find helpful in comprehending the contents of this site, depending on your needs.
- JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
- Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available.
- Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
- Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
- Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user stylesheets, and image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.
- Mozilla and Firefox, visual browser suite and a smaller independent browser, respectively. Both employ and support many accessibility features including text zooming, user style sheets, and image toggle. Both are open-source and freely available for use and modification. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.
