Accessibility Statement

This page documents the accessibility features of Planet Bods. It is correct of 3 April 2005. If you have any questions regarding this document, please email us.

As Planet Bods has grown over several years, some pages have more accessibility features than others. As and when pages are updated, additional functionality is added.

Access keys

Many browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the website.

In Windows and Linux you can press ALT + an access key, whilst on Mac OS you can press Control + and access key.

Planet Bods defines the following access keys:

Access key I

The main home page for the section you are in

Standards Compliance

  1. Pages validate as either HTML 4.01 Transitional or HTML 4.01 Strict. All CSS is valid
  2. All pages use structured, semantic mark-up. For example H2 tags are used for main page titles and H3 tags are used for subtitles.

Please note that occasionally a page may not comply with the above, but this is not intentional, and will be fixed when the problem is spotted.

Many pages comply with levels 1, 2 and 3 of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. However due to the age of some of the content on this site, not all pages currently meet these standards.

Navigational Aids

  1. Pages contain a number of LINK rel elements for navigation purposes in text-only browsers and screen readers. These include links to the homepage, search page and where appropriate, going to the next or previous page.

    Mozilla users can also use this feature by going to the View menu, Show/Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always).

    Opera 7 should show the links as required, but if they do not appear it can be turned on by going to View, Navigation Bar, Auto (or a permanent on-screen position).

  2. Each page includes a link to the search page, and many pages include search boxes.

Links and Scripting

  1. Some links include title attributes which describe the link in greater detail. Those links without title attributes, generally describe the page target already. More will be added over time.
  2. Wherever possible, links are written to make as much sense out of context.
  3. There are no "javascript:" pseudo-links. All links can be followed in any browser, with or without scripting.
  4. There are no links that open new windows without warning.
  5. Unless otherwise mentioned, scripting is not essential to view Planet Bods.
  6. All scripts are designed to degrade nicely, and not cause errors in older browsers.

Images

Images used in content include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.

Visual Design

  1. All of Planet Bods uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
  2. Relative font sizes are used to ensure fonts can be resized in all browsers.
  3. If a browser does not support stylesheets, or they are turned off, the content of each page is still readable. Navigational elements feature additional labels to ensure that they make sense without the context given to them by the visual design.
  4. When viewed without stylesheets, the page is layed out in a sensible order of content, search, additional navigation and information, section navigation and global navigation.

Abbreviations and acronyms

In most cases, abbreviations and acronyms are explained in text on their first use on a page.

Some other abbreviations and acronyms are marked up using appropiate HTML tags. In browsers which support these tags, the abbreviation/acronym should appear underlined. Focusing should reveal the expanded version.

Document History

This is version 1.1 of the Planet Bods accessibility statement. It is based on the Dive Into Mark Accessibility Statement by Mark Pilgrim.