The HumanWare site has been designed for accessibility for blind people using screen readers and for people with low vision. This means closely following W3C and other accessibility guidelines, testing the site carefully, and being open to feedback. 

Text size

In Windows, using both Internet Explorer and Firefox, you can choose the View menu, Text Size option to change text size. (The keyboard shortcut is Alt-V, X). Other browsers are likely to have the same or similar options.

To zoom in and out on the entire page, not just the text, hold down the Ctrl key and use the plus (+) and minus (-) keys, or rotate the mouse wheel if you have one on your mouse.

We have not implemented onscreen plus and minus buttons for resizing text on our Web pages because these can interfere with the use of the plus (+) and minus (-) keys described here, which, once learned, are easier to use and work on many more sites.

For the Macintosh, use the Cmd key and + or - to quickly change the font size.

Colours

People with various eye conditions find different colour combinations easier or harder to use. This site supports three colour schemes: standard (black on white), yellow on blue, and white on black. Simply choose the appropriate colour combination from the pull-down menu and all pages on the Humanware Web site will be displayed in the colour scheme you have chosen from then on.

Access Keys

Blind users find it valuable to have shortcuts for jumping to important links. Access keys provide those shortcuts. We support the most commonly recommended set of access key shortcuts.

To use access keys, hold down the ALT key and press the appropriate access key. In Firefox, this will "click" the link; in Internet Explorer and most other browsers, it will highlight the link, which you can then "click" by pressing the Enter key.

We support the following access keys on every page of the site. In most cases, holding down ALT and then entering a number highlights a link; pressing Enter then selects the link and takes you to the destination:

• ALT+1 <Enter> - Home page
• ALT+2 <Enter> - Skip to main content
• ALT+3 <Enter> - Skip to sub-menu
• ALT+4 - Search (no <Enter>, and you can then type straight into the Search box)
• ALT+8 <Enter> - Terms and Conditions
• ALT+9 <Enter> - Feedback
• ALT+0 <Enter> - This accessibility page

Web site page structure

This Web site is designed with consistency in mind. Once you have learnt your way around a single page, you should find that most other pages can be accessed and interrogated in a similar fashion.

Points of consistency:

• All Humanware Web site pages have a main menu at the top of the document and choosing one of the links from this will take you into that area of the Web site.
• Products are found under the Solutions tab, which has several areas underneath it by type of product, software or service. Braille and Speech is the first such area, Low Vision second, Orientation third, Digital Talking Books fourth.
• Most pages can access other pages in the same area by using the sub-menu, which follows after the main menu and which is marked as an HTML heading 2.
• The main content of a page usually starts at the second or third heading on a page, and can be reached quickly either by jumping by heading, choosing from a list of headings in a screen reader, or by clicking the "Skip to main content" link at the top of the page (ALT+2 access key).
• The title of each page, which can be read by most screen readers, and which appears in the coloured bar at the top of the browser window, describes the page, helping you know where in the Web site you are.
• Many links have titles, which give longer descriptions of where they lead. You can access these by telling your screen reader to use these, or you can move the mouse over the link and the fuller details will appear in a popup window which disappears when you move the mouse away.
• All photographs and pictures of relevance have been given an appropriate alternative text description. Your screen reader can read these out, and moving the mouse over the picture can popup this description. Unimportant images have an empty text description so that your screenreader will not read these out to you.

Resources

A few of the resources we have drawn on making this Web site more accessible are:

• Dive Into Accessibility site. Mark Python's Dive Into Accessibility guide is a great resource for all kinds of accessibility.
• RNIB Web accessibility help section. The UK's Royal National Institute of the Blind Web site has a strong Accessibility help section.
• NFB Web accessibility area. The National Federation of the Blind in the US has a very good accessibility checklist, part of their strong certification program.
• CSS Zen Garden site. This site demonstrates the wide range of designs possible with "pure" HTML and Cascading Style Sheets, the World Wide Web consortium standard for Web page design. Great demonstrations on the site and a link to the related book.

Feedback

Humanware is always interested in improving the accessibility of this Web site. If you have suggestions on how to do this for your particular setup, please send us feedback so that we can continue to improve your experience of this website.