Accessibility

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." -- Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web

This is the official accessibility statement for the ORDS web site. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us on info@ords....sdfsdf.

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 (depending on which browser you use). In some browsers, you may need to press ENTER to confirm your choice.

All pages on this site define the access keys noted below. NOTE: Some project pages that do not have the standard set of links or follow the standard ORDS page layout may not support the full set of accesskeys. This also applies to online user support guides that do not use the standard layout. Also, individual service interfaces may not use accesskeys, or may use a different set of keys, though we will be trying to standardise the keys used.

Access key 1 - Home Page
Access key 2 - Data Services
Access key 3 - Data Capture
Access key 4 - Data Management
Access key 5 - Solutions
Access key 6 - About ORDS
Access key 7 - Contact ORDS
Access key 9 - Skip to page content
Access key 0 - Accessibility statement (this page)

The Tab Key can be used to skip through successive options or navigation elements.

Standards compliance

The pages within the ORDS web site comply with all priority 1 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines..

The pages within the ORDS web site should validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags and lower for subtitles.

On any page within the website, there is a 'Skip Navigation' link (accesskey 9) mapped to an invisible graphic, in order to bypass navigation links.

Every page has two global navigation bars, one that precedes the main content of the page, and which includes the following links: "Home", "About the Network", "Events", "Speak your Mind", "Resources" and "Contact Us". The left-hand bar includes a summary of the next forthcoming Event, as taken from the Events section. In addition, the left-hand bar contains a 'Quick Vote' tool which enables users to interact in regular polls and to view results of the current poll. Also, users can add their email address onto a mailing list to receive regular bulletins from the ORDS.

Links

Links are written to make sense out of context. Where the text of the link does not explain the purpose, the "Title" attribute has been added to explain
When a link leads away from the ORDS web site, a new browser window will open. This should be noted in the title of the link (see the above links on this page as an example).

Images

All content images used in this site include descriptive alt attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null alt attributes.

Visual design

This site uses css for layout, however some pages may contain tables to assist in layout Where used solely for layout purposes, table headers are not used, however the 'summary' attribute is still used to expalin the contents of a table.
Style sheets are used to designate font size and colour, both in "ordinary" text and linked text, and background and other visual layout aspects of tables.
If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.