Accessibility Statement

This is the official accessibility statement for the USA Paralympics website. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us.

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: Accesskey 0 = Accessibility Statement
Accesskey 1 = Home
Accesskey 2 = About
Accesskey 3 = Programs
Accesskey 4 = Military
Accesskey 5 = Resources
Accesskey 6 = Contact

Standards Compliance

  1. This site is WCAG AAA approved, complying wih all priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This is always a judgement call; many accessibility features can be measured, but many can not; many guidelines are intentionally vague and can not be tested automatically. We have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance at the time of the launch of this website.
  2. All pages on this site comply with the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. Again, a judgement call. We have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.
  3. All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict. This is not a judgement call; a program can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid XHTML.
  4. 4. 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 (such as the headline of an article).
  2. Links are written to make sense out of context.

Images

  1. All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
  2. Complex images may 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. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Text Resizing

This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers. See the text resizing instructions for the browser you use:

Text Resizing Instructions:

You can make the text larger or smaller on this website, or on any website you visit by changing the settings on your computer.

To check which version of Internet browser is installed on your machine:

  • Open your browser;
  • Select Help from the top menu of your browser; then
  • Select About (followed by your browser name) from the drop-down list.
  • The screen that comes up will display which browser and version you are using.

How to change the text size:
(common keyboard shortcuts for text resize are Control + to increase and Control - to reduce)

Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 and higher

  • Select Page
  • Select Text size
  • Choose a size from the options Largest to Smallest.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or 7.0

  • Select View;
  • Select Text size;
  • Choose a size from the options Largest to Smallest.

Firefox

  • Select View;
  • Select Text size;
  • Choose Increase (Control +) or Decrease (Control -)

Opera

  • Select View;
  • Select Zoom;
  • Select a size from the list.

Safari

  • Select View;
  • First, enable text-only zooming, then use Zoom In/Zoom out or Command + or Command -.

Google Chrome

  • Google Chrome seems to only support page zooming.
  • Select View
  • Select Zoom In or Zoom Out

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

  1. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
  2. Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
  3. Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
  4. Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user stylesheets, image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.