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Accessibility

This is the official accessibility statement for the main Department of Applied Chemistry, Cochin University of Science & Technology website. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to get in touch.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Internet Explorer on Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

All pages on this site define the following access keys:

  • Home - accesskey 1
  • Searchbox - accesskey 2
  • Sitemap - accesskey 3
  • The_Department - accesskey 4
  • Our_People - accesskey 5
  • Research - accesskey 6
  • Academics - accesskey 7
  • Facilities - accesskey 8
  • News - accesskey 9
  • University - accesskey A
  • Contact -  accesskey B

Standards compliance

All pages are WCAG AA approved, complying with all priority 1 and 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This is a judgement call; many guidelines are intentionally vague and can not be tested automatically. I have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.

All pages are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. Again, a judgement call. I have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.

Pages will conform to web standards / W3C compliant XHTML 1.0 Strict. This is not a judgement call; a program can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid XHTML. For example, check the home page for XHTML validity.

All pages use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+2.

Navigation aids

All tables have properly scoped header cells, to allow screen readers to render the calendar intelligently.

Links

Wherever possible, links are written to make sense out of context. Many browsers (such as JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx, and Opera) can extract the list of links on a page and allow the user to browse the list, separately from the page.

Link text is never duplicated; two links with the same link text always point to the same address.

There are no pseudo-links. All links can be followed in any browser, even if scripting is turned off.

Images

All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.

Visual design

This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.

This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers. For example, if you're using Internet Explorer, you can make your default text size larger under the "View" menu, "Text Size", "Larger" (or "Largest").

If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility references

Accessibility software

  • JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
  • Home Page Reader. a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available.
  • Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
  • Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
  • Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user stylesheets, image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.

Accessibility services

  • HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
  • Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.