Accessibility Statement
The Visual and Autonomous Exploration Systems Research Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology is committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability. The goal of this site is to reach accessibility and usability by adhering to all standards and guidelines of Section 508, ADA, and W3C's WCAG, as described in detail below. Compliance with these standards helps to make universal Internet access a vision for all.
Standards of Compliance
- All pages on this site follow U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
- All pages on this site are WCAG approved, complying with all priorities of W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
- All pages on this site are compliant with Americans with Disabilities Act.
Visual Design
- This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
- This site uses only relative font sizes.
- The content of each page is still readable even if your browser does not support style sheets.
- Text and images are primarily high contrast, black and white for ease of reading.
Images
- All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes.
- Complex images include LONGDESC attributes.
Access Keys
This website uses access keys. The description of the access keys and how to use them can be found at: http://autonomy.caltech.edu/accessibility/accesskeys.html.Validation Testing
All generated webpages are tested both for validity and accessibility. Validation tests include:- W3C Markup Validation Service, a free service that checks web documents in formats such as (X)HTML for conformance to W3C's recommendations and other standards.
- W3C CSS Validation Service, a free service that checks Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) in (X)HTML documents for conformance to W3C's recommendations (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/).
- WAVE 5, a freely available online web accessibility testing tool that applies Section 508 standards (http://wave.webaim.org/).
W3C and WAVE icons, indicating the degree of conformance, are displayed on every webpage whose accessibility was successfully verified. Icons link to the respective W3C and WAVE sites, which perform an instantaneous validation test when clicked.
