Accessibility Statement

This is the official accessibility statement for the Manatee County Water Atlas. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us using the information on the contact page.

Standards Compliance

1. Where possible, all pages on this site are WCAG AAA approved, complying with all priority 1 and many priority 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
2. Where possible, all pages on this site are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
3. Where possible, all pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
4. Where possible, all pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+3.

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. Wherever possible, links are written to make sense 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.
3. Link text is never duplicated on the same page; two links with the same link text always point to the same address.
4. Outside of minor exceptions, there are no "javascript:" pseudo-links. Links can be followed in any browser, even if scripting is turned off.
5. The following images and link text are used to designate that links open new windows:
   1. 
   2. 
   3. "Learn more... > >"
   4. "Submit..." or "Report..."
   Other than minor logical exceptions, there are no links that open new windows without warning.

Images

1. All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
2. Complex images include LONGDESC attributes or inline descriptions to explain the significance of each image to non-visual readers.

Visual Design

1. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
2. This site uses relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
3. If your browser or browsing device does not support style sheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility References

1. W3 accessibility guidelines. This reference explains the reasons behind each guideline.
2. W3 accessibility techniques. This reference 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

1. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
2. IBM Easy Web Browsing, an application that helps people with limited vision, seniors and even novice users access Web content more easily. A downloadable evaluation version is available.
3. Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
4. Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
5. Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user style sheets, image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.

Accessibility References

1. WebXACT, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.
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. Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.