The PREL website has been designed to be highly accessible to persons visiting our site through the use of assistive technologies. Visitors who need to make use of these features may include:

• People with visual impairments who use text-to-speech converters (programs which convert webpages directly to text)
• People with hearing impairments who may need phonetic equivalents for audio materials
• People with impaired mobility who have difficulty using a conventional mouse or keyboard.

The following provides information for visitors to help make the most of these accessibility features.

Alt Tags
Images are provided with text equivalents which describe the content of the image. Images without visual content (e.g., an image which supports page layout) are provided with zero-length text equivalents.

Access Keys
Access Keys are provided for the main navigation sections and the PREL's work sections of the website. This corresponds to all of the text links which normally appear at the bottom of each page. Access keys are activated (using a keyboard) by pressing the Alt key and the access key together, then pressing Enter. The following access keys are used for this website:

Access Keys for Main Sections:

Alt-A	About PREL
Alt-B	PREL's Programs
Alt-C	Products
Alt-D	Opportunities
Alt-E	News & Events
Alt-F	Pacific Service Region
Alt-G	Search
Alt-H	Send Email to PREL
Alt-I	PREL Site Map
Alt-J	Online Library
Alt-X	Skip Navigation (See below)

Skip Navigation
An internal link is provided on each page which is used to skip to the main page content and bypass the beginning navigation menu. The name of this anchor is always “navskip” on each page. This link can also be activated by using the Alt-“X” Access Key. This link has no visible anchor text, and is provided specifically so that persons using a screen reader can bypass reading of the navigational items when a new page is displayed.

Acrobat Documents
This site contains content in Adobe Acrobat format, also known as “Portable Document Format” or PDF. There is currently no available direct text-to-speech converter for Acrobat documents, as Adobe is currently developing this software. However, this site does provide a link to a text-only version of each Acrobat document. The accessible link is always adjacent to the link which references the original PDF document. The text-only version is provided by executing a service on the Adobe website. This service then retrieves the document from the PREL website, converts it to HTML and displays the result.

For persons who are not using a speech-to-text converter, the Acrobat reader may be downloaded from the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/alternate.html.

Compliance Statement
Portions of this website were developed under federally funded programs. The site has been designed to comply with federal standards for website accessibility as defined in Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.

The pages on this site have been tested for compliance against guidelines adopted by the World Wide Web Consortium (also known as the W3C). The site complies with all Priority 1 checkpoints as defined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 W3C Recommendation 5-May-1999 [www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/]. Cascading Style Sheets conform to W3C Specifications for Cascading Style Sheets. The site is also fully accessible without the application of its style sheets.

The site conforms to requirements for Bobby Approval per the guidelines of the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST).

Accessibility Resources
Federal Access Board - Accessibility Guidelines and Standards [www.access-board.gov/indexes/accessindex.htm]
World Wide Web Consortium - Accessibility Initiative [www.w3.org/wai/]
National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research [www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/osers/nidrr/index.html]
Information on Alternative Web Browsers [www.w3.org/WAI/References/Browsing]

back to top

 

Last updated September 16, 2004