Accessibility

Purpose

• Establish minimum standards as set by the W3C and Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act
• To further the cause for accessibility and code compliance
• Improve access to our web site, creating a better user experience for all visitors

Navigation

The navigation on our website has undergone many changes.

• Individuals who rely on screen readers to deliver content will now be able to skip the navigation and get to page content faster.
• We have added a search box to the main navigation on all pages.
• A link to our accessibility page has now been added to every page footer.

Access keys have been added for quicker navigation of SBDCNet. The keys can be used to jump quickly from one page to another using "hotkeys." These are cntrl + (key) on Macintosh while Windows users can hit ALT + (key), enter may be required for IE users. Not all browsers currently support access keys. Among those that do are IE4+, Firefox, Opera, Mozilla, and Netscape. Our assigned access keys are:

• Home = 0
• Tools = 1
• Online Learning = 2
• About Us = 3
• Community = 4
• Contact Us = 5
• Advanced Search = 6
• Sitemap = 7

Links

All links on this site have been created as text with the exception of our partners: The University of Texas at San Antonio and the Small Business Administration. They will open in their own browser window. This will enable the user to keep our resources available while exploring the content we provide. Those using screen readers should keep this in mind while using our site.

Visual Design

The new design of this website takes advantage of newer industry design standards. We have made the decision to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in the implementation of our redesign. This will enable the user to adjust fonts to their liking using the "text size" options of your browser. To those who have disabled style sheets our site will appear as a plain text document. We have also added alt tags to all images on the site.

Browsers

We have compiled a list of all browsers that use the latest web standards as established by W3C.

For PC:

For Macintosh:

For Linux:

To find a browser that suits your needs, we recommend heading over to

Standards Compliance

Our pages validate as 508 compliant as tested by the Bobby validator. Should there be any challenges for those utilizing this site, please supply us with your valuable feedback at mailto:% This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Accessibility Software

W3 Listing of browsers and alternate options.

Freedom Scientific Screen readers and other software for pc.

VoiceOver From Apple

Jupiter an open source screen reader for Linux.

More Info

• W3's Web Accessibility Initiative
• Dive Into Accessibility
• Put accessibility to work: Knowbility

Things to Consider

Keep in mind that there are hundreds of links on our site. In order to keep them easy to navigate, we have designed them to open in their own browser window. Those using screen readers may need to keep this in mind while navigating SBDCNET.