The font resizing tool is one small feature of a recent redesign of this website. It allows a user to choose a comfortable font size for viewing this website. One of the intentions of the redesign was to ensure that the site would be accessible to the widest audience.
What does that mean?
Millions of people have disabilities that affect their access to the Web. Sadly, many web sites are constructed so that they are largely unusable to such users. Those users:
- may be color blind
- may be completely blind or partially blind
- may suffer from disabilities that prevent them from reading or comprehending text properly (e.g. dyslexia)
- may not be able to read small text
- may use screen readers or text browsers
What did Pine Tree Society do to make this site accessible?
The Pine Tree Society made every effort to make the site accessible. Besides testing the website on a variety of browsers and operating systems to ensure consistency and compliance with coding standards, steps were taken to ensure that the site also follows published accessiblity guidelines. For example, the site conforms to Section 508 guidelines, along with Priority 1 and Priority 2 checkpoints of the WAI Guidelines (see below).
What are Section 508 and WAI guidelines?
Section 508 refers to the Federal Section 508 Guidelines and the WAI is the Website Accessiblity Initiative of the W3C.
In 1998, Congress enacted Section 508 which required Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. While it doesn't directly affect non-government websites, it has helped publicize the issue.
In addition, W3C's Website Accessibility Initiative is arguably the leading proponent of, and resource for, website accessibility.
What are some of the site's accessibility features?
Some of the accessible features of the site include:
- text is used wherever possible to convey information (instead of images)
- use of cascading stylesheets (CSS) for layout and presentation
- relative font sizes - that way, a user can resize their browser font
- all non-text elements have a text equivalent (e.g. ALT tags for images)
- header elements (H1,H2, etc) are used properly to convey document structure
- targets of links are clearly identified
- tables are used minimally for layout
- there are no frames
- input forms use the <label> tag to connect the question to the input field
- prominently displayed font resizing tool
For more information, you can visit the following resources:
