Website Accessibility Statement

The First In Families of North Carolina website (www.fifnc.org) has been designed and developed to be accessible following the layers of guidance while striving to attain the highest level of conformance as defined by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.

These guidelines are in consideration of people who may not be able to see, hear or move, or may not be able to process some types of information easily or at all. They may be people who have difficulty reading or comprehending text, using a keyboard or mouse, or those using a text-only screen, a small screen, or a slow Internet connection. They may be people who do not speak or understand fluently the language in which the document is written. They also are in consideration of people who have an early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser, or a different operating system.

The following is taken from the WCAG 2.0 Layers of Guidance found on the W3.org website.

  • Principles - At the top are four principles that provide the foundation for Web accessibility: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust. See also Understanding the Four Principles of Accessibility.
  • Guidelines - Under the principles are guidelines. The 12 guidelines provide the basic goals that authors should work toward in order to make content more accessible to users with different disabilities. The guidelines are not testable, but provide the framework and overall objectives to help authors understand the success criteria and better implement the techniques.
  • Success Criteria - For each guideline, testable success criteria are provided to allow WCAG 2.0 to be used where requirements and conformance testing are necessary such as in design specification, purchasing, regulation, and contractual agreements. In order to meet the needs of different groups and different situations, three levels of conformance are defined: A (lowest), AA, and AAA (highest). Additional information on WCAG levels can be found in Understanding Levels of Conformance.
  • Sufficient and Advisory Techniques - For each of the guidelines and success criteria in the WCAG 2.0 document itself, the working group has also documented a wide variety of techniques. The techniques are informative and fall into two categories: those that are sufficient for meeting the success criteria and those that are advisory. The advisory techniques go beyond what is required by the individual success criteria and allow authors to better address the guidelines. Some advisory techniques address accessibility barriers that are not covered by the testable success criteria. Where common failures are known, these are also documented.

Validation

Validate accessibility with automatic tools and human review. Automated methods are generally rapid and convenient but cannot identify all accessibility issues. Human review can help ensure clarity of language and ease of navigation.

Along with the human review of each page on this website, the following is a list of tools and practices that were used and applied in order to ensure accessibility.

  • xHTML syntax validated
  • Style sheets validated
  • Viewed in a text only browser
  • Viewed using multiple graphic browsers including old and new browsers
  • Used small display and zoomed browsers
  • Uses spell and grammar checkers.
  • Site reviewed for clarity and simplicity.
  • People with disabilities invited to review site

Users Customized Browsers

All modern browsers allow users to adjust the default browser settings and select personal fonts, font size, link colors and other aspects of how a browser renders a website. These settings are especially useful for people with disabilities and are often built in to assistive technologies.

This website was developed with user options in mind and will allow any visitor to change the size and type of font used when viewing this site, change background and text colors and set the browser width to accommodate the visitors needs.

Reading Online

Most users scan the content quickly, read the headlines or titles, and only then decide whether to read the actual content. This website has been developed to be more scannable by including:

  • Headers: Headers and sub-headers have been employed in order to organize this website logically
  • Bulleted Lists have been employed to break out important information into bulleted lists with brief descriptions of each item. Visitors' eyes will naturally gravitate towards those sections.
  • Color and Contrast: Important statements have been highlighted using colored backgrounds or contrasting text colors and fonts

People Read 25 percent slower on the Web

Sun Microsystems states that users read 25 percent slower and 25 percent less on a computer screen than on paper. Because a reader's attention span is much shorter on the Web, the content of this website has been kept clear and concise and page lengths short.

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This statement has been provided by Nancy Massey of MasseyNet.com, Inc., an accessibility specialist. If you are experiencing any accessibility issues with this site, please email Nancy.