This is the official accessibility statement for nextBlock.com. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email us at info@nextblock.com.

Access keys

This site has chosen not to use access keys because they can interfere with the users chosen keyboard mappings.

Standards compliance

1. All pages on this site are Cynthia AAA approved.
2. All pages on this site is WCAG AAA approved, complying with all priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Again, this is a judgment call; many guidelines are intentionally vague and can not be tested automatically. We have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.
3. All pages on this site are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. Again, a judgment call. We have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.
4. All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict. This is not a judgment call; a program can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid XHTML. For example, check this page for XHTML validity.
5. All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+3.

Navigation aids

1. All pages have rel=previous, next, up, and home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers. Opera, Firefox, Mozilla, and other modern browser users can also take advantage of this feature by selecting the View menu, Show/Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always).
2. Links to external sites (not on nextBlock), are indicated with an external link icon. This indicates that the link will open in a new window.
3. nextBlock.com does not open new windows for users with javascript disabled. Users with javascript will have a new page open on certain links, but these links are indicated by the title attribute. If you have a pop-up blocker, the javascript calling the new window will return false, and the link will open in the same window. If you do not want links to open in the same window, Right Click (Win) or Command Click (Mac) and choose Open in New Window or Tab.

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.

Images

1. All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics 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 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 stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

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

1. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
2. Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
3. Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
4. 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.

Accessibility services

1. Cynthia Says, 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.

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.
3. Dive Into Accessibility, a site that will give you ways to make your site easily accessible.

Tests

The following tests were performed on the site. nextBlock.com passed these tests.