Accessibility

Accessibility statement

This is the official accessibility statement for the website of the Office de Promotion du tourisme de Wallonie et de Bruxelles. If you any questions or suggestions regarding the websites accessibility, do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected] or at + 32 (0) 70 221 021 (Belgium: 0,17€/min).

We would like to thank AnySurfer for their valuable advices to make this website accessible.


Here you can find the main functionalities that we have implemented to improve the accessibility of this website:


Compatibility to the accessibility standards

  1. All pages of this website have been validated by AnySurfer .
  2. All pages on this website validate as XHTML 1.0. This is not a judgment call, a program can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid XHTML. For example, you can check this page for XHTML validity.
  3. All pages on this website use structured semantic markup. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip from one paragraph to the next 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. Many browsers (such as JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx and Opera) can extract the list of links of a page and allow a user to consult this list separate from the content page.
  3. The text of the links is never duplicated; two links with the same texts always point to the same address.
  4. There are no pseudo links ¿javascript:¿. All links can be followed by the browser even if the scripting is not active.

Images

  1. All content images of this site use ALT descriptive attributes. Purely decorative images 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 the visual layout.
  2. This site uses only 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.
  4. No table has been used for the layout.
  5. ¿High contrast and large character size¿ style sheets are available.

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.

Software

1. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
2. Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo 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 demo is available. Compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, and several other operation systems.

Accessibility services

1. Bobby, 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.

Related resources

1. WebAIM, non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
2. Designing More Usable Web Sites, a large list of additional resources.

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 and services

  1. Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines.
  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. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited demo is available.
  5. Lynx, a free text-only web browser.

Related resources

  1. WebAIM, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
  2. Designing More Usable Web Sites, a large list of additional resources.

Accessibility books I recommend

  1. Joe Clark: Building Accessible Websites. I tech-edited this book; it¿s excellent. Comprehensive but not overwhelming.
  2. Jim Thatcher and others: Constructing Accessible Web Sites. Less comprehensive than Joe¿s book, but goes into greater depth in the topics it covers. Gives screenshots of how various screen readers and alternative browsers interpret various tags and markup. Also has an amazing chapter on the current state of legal accessibility requirements.
  3. Mark Pilgrim: Dive Into Accessibility : A very interesting book available online for free on the different techniques to make a website accessible. This accessibility statement has been inspired by this book.