At Moonburst, we pride ourselves on the quality of the design of each of our websites, whether large or small. In order to continue to achieve the highest quality for both our clients and their users, we now only produce websites that comply with the W3C WAI guidelines. When creating web sites for our clients we recommend that the highest standard possible should be met and we make every effort to ensure that all pages are accessible to as many people as possible according to the guidelines.
Many people assume that to be "WAI compliant" the site will have to be void of any design or aesthetic attributes. This is not the case, and we at Moonburst aim to prove the point!
About the accessibility guidelines
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) set up by the World Wide Web Consortium(W3C) have provided a list of checkpoints that a website should satisfy. The checkpoints are split into 3 levels of importance or PRIORITY (known as Priority 1, 2 and 3 or Levels A, AA and AAA or High, Medium and Low Priority). These are defined as:
- Priority 1 checkpoints (High Priority) (Level A compliance)
A Web content developer must satisfy these checkpoints. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it impossible to access information in the document. Satisfying these checkpoints is a basic requirement for some groups to be able to use Web documents.
- Priority 2 checkpoints (Medium Priority) (Level AA compliance means satisfying all Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints)
A Web content developer should satisfy these checkpoints. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying these checkpoints will remove significant barriers to accessing Web documents.
- Priority 3 (Low Priority) (Level AAA compliance means satisfying all Priority 1, 2 and 3 checkpoints)
A Web content developer may address these checkpoints. Otherwise, one or more groups will find it somewhat difficult to access information in the document. Satisfying these checkpoints will improve access to Web documents.
Whilst many W3C standards remain intentionally vague and therefore subject to individual judgement, some can be automatically tested. We run a variety of recognised automated tests and review all pages created. We always try comply with the accessibility standards and guidelines from the W3C WAI to at least priority 2, though we recognise that owing to the many different interpretations of the guidelines, there may be instances where this may be seen not to be the case.
W3C Standards:
We make every effort to ensure the following is true for all newly designed Moonburst Sites.
- All pages are W3C Web Accessibility Initiative AA approved, complying with priority 1 and 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. (By default most pages become AAA, priority 3, compliant to the W3C WCAG)
- All pages created are Section 508 Guidelines approved (U.S.)
- All HTML pages created validate as W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional
- All Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) used validate as W3C Cascading Style Sheets, CSS2 Specification
Accessibility in Design:
- We make every effort to ensure the following is true for all newly designed Moonburst Sites.
- All pages use structured semantic mark-up.
- Content is separated from visual design and cascading style sheets (CSS) are used for visual layout.
- Only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers are used.
- If the user's browser or browsing device does not support style sheets, the page content is still readable.
- All links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target.
- Links are written to make sense out of context.
- Links to external web sites open up a new browser window where this is supported by the browser.
- All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
- No images are used to convey information.
- No information is exclusively conveyed using colour.
- Tables are only used for layout purposes if there is no other feasible way of representing the information to the required effect.
- Access keys are used as well as navigation menus
- Tab indexes are set such that the content links are presented first in the sequence they appear on the page.
Testing:
We test and pass our sites using the following recognised systems
Watchfire - for WCAG Priority 1,2,3
Cynthia - for WCAG Priority 1,2,3 and Section 208
W3C Mark-up Validation Service
W3C CSS Validator
