Accessibility Features on Our Website
Helen Keller Services for the Blind is committed to making our website as accessible as possible to everyone, including people who are blind or visually impaired. We have used the following techniques to help you make the most of our website:
High contrast and linearized layouts
Using links at the top of each page, you can easily choose the way our website displays: default, high-contrast (larger black text on cream-colored background), and high-contrast linearized (larger white text on black background in a simplified linear layout). If your browser is set up to accept cookies, it will “remember” your preferred layout the next time you visit our site.
Resizable text
All the text on our page uses relative sizes to allow you to make text bigger or smaller to suit your needs. There are different methods used by each browser to implement this feature, including:
Firefox and Safari—Holding Ctrl and pressing the + key or - key will increase or decrease the text size, respectively. (This technique should work for most websites.)
Internet Explorer—Go to the View menu and find the Text Size item. This opens a submenu which has a series of preset sizes you can choose from. Select the font size you want to use and it will be applied to the page immediately. (This works only on websites, such as ours, set up with relative text sizes.)
Page layout
Our website has been designed as a fluid layout, which can be easily viewed in a range of browser sizes. If you have a large monitor and view the site with text enlarged, you can extend the size of the site layout to accommodate the larger text.
Skip to navigation link
This link, at the top of every page, takes you to the first link in our navigation menu. The link is not visible in the default or high-contrast layouts, but is available in screen readers. The skip link is most useful for screen readers, text browsers, and mobile internet devices.
Alt text for images
We have provided alternative text for all images to enable people who are using screen readers or text browsers to understand the images.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Our website is designed using Cascading Style Sheets, which separate the style from the site content. This helps to display pages more quickly, and makes the site easier to use with a screen reader.
Printing
Print style sheets allow our pages to be printed clearly and with no unnecessary images or color, to save you time, paper, and ink.
