The Bifurcation Point

Accessibility Statement

Accessibility should always be a priority. But designing and developing ways to present data to everyone regardless of physical challenges, learning styles/needs, language barriers, or cultural influences, requires the designer/developer to step into the shoes of so many different types of people. The first step is to realize that there is more than one way to "perceive" information and ultimately, more than one way to present information.

Accessibility and The Bifurcation Point

Because this Web site is actually an experiment in accessibility, pages and styles within sections of the site change periodically. Additionally, sections are added to highlight specific issues and challenges in accessible Web design.

"The Bifurcation Point" pages focus on styling the content for hand-held devices as well as computer screens.

"Nek's" pages focus on accessibility issues regarding multi-lingual content that resides within a single document, such as the English, Italian and Spanish content found on the bio and lyrics pages.

Future sections include pages about LEGO Mindstorms, which is a kit that allows you to build and program robots. This section will focus on accessibility issues regarding the use of audio and video elements.

Accessibility and Standards Compliance

Our main goals include:

  • Present certain types of content in a way that will allow site visitors to "get" the information regardless of the technology used to access the pages.
  • Identify the challenges of presenting information through a variety of channels, then organize the content so visitors can choose alternative methods to output or display the information.

There are several practices that can help us realize our vision. Each practice is critical for different reasons. Collectively, these practices get us a lot closer to success.

  • Become aware of the different challenges people may encounter while accessing information on the Web.
  • Separate the content markup from presentation markup.
  • Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to format the content.
  • Use correct markup.
  • Use correct spelling and grammar.
  • Validate the document in a number of ways.
  • Test the pages using various types of browsers and assistive technologies.

At this time, the pages of this site do not conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 as there is a color contrast issue in the "Bifurcation Point" section and pages have a fixed width in the "Nek" section. These issues are present for demonstration purposes.

Access Keys

Access keys are used in most of the sections of this site. The access key for a specific link is documented in the link's "title" attribute. An access key can be used to activate a specific link without clicking on the link text by pressing "Alt" (PC) or "Control" (Mac) and the access key on most browsers. If you use Internet Explorer (IE), you must also press the "Enter" key.

During a discussion with Gez Lemon of Juicy Studio, we discovered the only safe keys to use are the number keys. Access letter keys may override a browser's keyboard shortcuts. For example: Firefox uses Alt+h to allow a user to access the Help menu and Alt+b to allow access to the Bookmarks menu. Our use of Alt+h for the Home link and Alt+b for "A Bifurcation Point" denies access to the Help and Bookmarks menu from the keyboard for anyone using Firefox. Internet Explorer and Netscape have similar problems. Opera will not override a keyboard shortcut. Alt+h, Alt+b, and Alt+m will will not work in Opera for navigation within this site. The following keys have been left as is for demonstration purposes.

Access Keys for Navigating Within the "Bifurcation Point" Section

  • h - The Bifurcation Point (the home page)
  • b - A Bifurcation Point (a definition of a bifurcation point)
  • a - About This Site
  • 8 - Accessibility Statement
  • c - Contact Us
  • l (L) - Links (our bifurcation points)
  • m - Site Map

Access Keys for Navigating Within the "Nek" Section

  • h - The Bifurcation Point (the home page)
  • a - About Nek
  • b - Nek's Biographical Information
  • p - Photos of Nek
  • l (L) - Nek's Lyrics
  • m - Site Map
  • 8 - Accessibility Statement

Use of Style Sheets

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used on this site.

  • Relative font sizes are used, which allows users to increase the size of the text in most browsers.
  • In some browsers, the style sheets can be turned off or replaced with a user-defined style sheet.
  • The pages have been tested in several browsers.

Accessibility and Browsers

One of the biggest challenges to Web page designers is the lack of standardization across Web browsers. The are a lot of different types of browsers with numerous browser versions in use. Each version of each browser has its quirks, which means there is no easy way to style the information so it looks exactly the same in every browser.

Some browsers allow users to change how a Web page is displayed, as long as the Web page uses standard accessibility markup and styling.

AltaVista Translation Information

The AltaVista Babel Fish logo contains links to translate this page into several different languages. As required by AltaVista - the graphic, HTML or AltaVista logo may not be modified in any way. Because AltaVista does not include an alt tag and uses JavaScript, this feature may not be available for some users or may be difficult to use with some assistive technologies.