Accessibility

The National Center on Student Progress Monitoring is committed to making every document on its web site accessible to the widest possible audience. We work with skilled accessibility contractors and our own accessibility specialists to insure that our documents are, to the maximum extent feasible, accessible to persons using special assistive technology, including screen reading software and refreshable Braille displays. Because we are continuously under development, we will continue to improve upon our current accessibility features.

Overview

This is the official accessibility statement for National Center on Student Progress Monitoring we have copied this document in many places literally from an excellent resource on accessibility and CSS (Stylesheets.) You can read the original statement. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact the Center on Student Progress Monitoring.

Standards Compliance

Pages on this site are mostly Bobby A approved, complying with most Bobby guidelines. This is always a judgement call; many accessibility features can be measured, but many can not. I have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that these pages are mostly in compliance.
Pages on this site are mostly WCAG A approved, complying wih most priority 1 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Again, this is a judgement call; many guidelines are intentionally vague and can not be tested automatically. I have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that these pages are mostly in compliance.
Pages on this site are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. Again, a judgement call. I have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.
All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict. This is not a judgement call; a program can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid XHTML.
All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. h1 elements are used for main titles, h2 and h3 tags for subtitles.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

All pages on this site define the following access keys:

Access key S - Skip to content
Access key 1 - Home page
Access key 2- About page
Access key 3 - Library
Access key 4 - Families
Access key 5 - Tools
Access key 0 - Accessibility statement

Images

All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.

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.

Accessibility references

W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains 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.
U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

Accessibility 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.

Accessibility services

Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.
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.
Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.

WebAIM, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
Designing More Usable Web Sites, a large list of additional resources.
Dive Into Accessibility, 30 days to a more accessible web site.

National Center on Student Progress Monitoring