Accessibility Statement

If you have any questions or comments, or if you find any of this information inaccurate or you need to report a problem on one of our pages, please feel free to contact the webmasters.

Search

• The home page and all archive pages include a search box. Advanced search options are available at the advanced search page.
• In addition, all weblogs have an internal search feature for more specific results. Weblog-powered sections of this site include:
  • News
  • Hometown Health
  • Academic Calendar
  • Events Calendar

Links

• Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target page.
• Links are written to make sense out of context.
• Links do not use Javascript and will not open new windows without warning.

Multimedia

• All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
• All content tables used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes for summary purposes.

• Purely decorative graphics are often coded as background images to content elements.
• We are working to implement better accessibility for our video content; please bear with us while we learn how to caption. In the meantime, let us know if you need a transcript.

Text

• This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
• Acronyms and abbreviations will often be spelled out the first time they appear in the page. Thereafter, you may hover your mouse over an acronym or abbreviation to see a tooltip with the full text. A partial list of our acronyms is available.
• This site uses real headers, real lists, and real links.

Visual design

• This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
• If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Printed pages

• Clicking the "print this page" link will display a stripped-down version suitable for printing. This is accomplished by using a style switcher to exchange a print stylesheet for the screen one.
• Acronyms and abbreviations will display their full text spelled out in parentheses the first time they appear in a page. If you see one you don't recognize, try hovering your mouse over it; a tooltip with the full text should appear.

Software

• JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
• Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available.
• Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
• Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
• Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user stylesheets, image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.

Services & Tools

• Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.
• Cynthia Says, another free analysis.
• W3C HTML/CSS Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards. This includes a utility to check for broken links.
• Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
• evolt.org's Browser Archives.
• The Webmaster Toolbar for Mozilla & Firefox.
• Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.

Outside References

• Texas Administrative Code Section 206 accessibility guidelines.
• U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.
• Dive Into Accessibility, an excellent guide which relates each rule to the type of person it helps. (We would like to thank the author for allowing others to use his accessibility statement.)
• W3 accessibility guidelines, an in-depth explanation of the reasons behind each guideline.
• W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
• W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer's guide to accessibility.

Related resources

• WebAIM, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
• Accessify, a site containing simple tools for webmasters as well as tutorials.

Accessibility Policy (in progress)

• Site Validation (W3C)
• Governor's Committee on People with Disabilities
• Accessibility Coordinator Contact Info