The New York Zero-to-Three Network promotes the optimal development of young children, their families, and their communities in the New York region. The Network provides support and information to professionals who work with New York's youngest children and their families by creating opportunities for interdisciplinary learning and collaboration.

 

Accessibility Statement

Overview

The New York Zero-to-Three Network website was created to be accessible to all Internet users, including those using non-visual browsers. What follows are highlights of the site's accessibility features and a list of resources for further reading. If you have any questions about web accessibility issues, feel free to contact our site developer, Michael Barrish of Blue Archer Media.

Standards compliance

Every page on the New York Zero-to-Three website meets the following standards benchmarks:

• Section 508 approved, complying with all guidelines of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
• Bobby AAA approved, complying with all priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
• Validates as XHTML 1.0 and CSS2. (These validations help assure the site's accessibility and full functionally in all standards-compliant browsers, now and in the future.)
• Uses structured semantic markup. (For example, H1 tags are used for page headings and H2 tags are used for section headings. This allows the users of screen readers such as JAWS to skip between page sections by typing ALT+INSERT+2.)

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the site. (Windows users: press ALT + an access key. Macintosh users: press Control + an access key.)

The New York Zero-to-Three website defines the following access keys:

Access key 1

Home

Access key 2

Email

Access key 0

Accessibility Statement

Links

Whenever possible, links are written to make sense when read out of context. (Many browsers can extract the list of links on a page, allowing users to browse the links separately from the page. Browsers that include this functionality include the following: JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx, and Opera.)

Images

All content images include descriptive ALT attributes to aid users of non-visual browsers.

Visual design

The Zero-to-Three website uses relative font sizes in all content areas. This means that the text on the site can made larger or smaller in many browsers by changing the browser's text size settings. For example, if you are using Internet Explorer, you can make the default text size larger under the View menu by selecting Text Size, Larger (or Largest).

If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility references

• W3 accessibility guidelines explains the reasons behind each guideline.
• W3 accessibility techniques explains how to implement each guideline.
• W3 accessibility checklist is a busy developer’s guide to accessibility.
• U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.
• 30 days to a more accessible weblog is a tutorial by Mark Pilgrim that explains accessibility guidelines and how to implement them.

Accessibility software and services

• Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines.
• HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
• Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
• JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited demo is available.
• Lynx, a free text-only web browser.

Related resources

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

Credit: Much thanks to Mark Pilgrim, an inspiring adovocate for web accessibility.