Website Accessibility > Access features
Access features
Skip main navigation
Each page of this site has a "Jump to content" link (keyboard shortcut ALT + ":"). This link enables visitors using screen readers or the keyboard for naviagtion, to skip past the main menu (top of the page) directly to the content of the page instead of having to listen or tab through all menu items whenever they go to a new page.
Keyboard accessibility
Considering that some of our visitors use only the keyboard for navigation we employed several techniques to make our website easier to navigate:
Accesskeys and keyboard shortcuts
Keyboard shortcuts allow visitors to select quickly the links that have a designated accesskey.
To use a shortcut, the Internet Explorer (IE) user needs to press (and hold) the ALT key together with the indicated accesskey and press the Enter key.
For Netscape users, pressing the ALT and accesskey will bring the desired page without pressing Enter.
Currently, most known keystroke combinations are already reserved for assistive technologies and other software working from a Windows platform, as well as for user defined shortcuts.
Because we were constrained to a small number of un-reserved "accesskeys" we were not able to select common or easy-to-remember keystrokes combinations (such as ALT + "H" for Home page, or ALT + "C" for Contact us) for links to our most visited pages. If we selected a reserved accesskey, our shortcuts could cause conflicts with our visitor's shortcuts.
Given these constraints, the keystroke combinations for links to some of our most visited pages are as follows:
| Link | Shortcut |
|---|---|
Jump to content |
ALT + ":" |
Programs & Services |
ALT + "X" |
Search this site |
ALT +"]" |
Contact us |
ALT + "[" |
FSTHome page |
ALT + "=" |
What’s New |
ALT + "Z" |
Site map |
ALT + "\" |
Tabbing
The TAB key is often used to jump from one link to another in sequence. When the desired link is reached, press Enter and the browser will go to the requested page.
To speed up access, we gave a higher priority to those links that are accessed more often by our visitors:
| Link | Tabindex |
|---|---|
Jump to content |
1 |
Programs & Services |
2 |
Search this site |
3 |
Contact us |
4 |
What’s New |
5 |
FSTHome page |
6 |
Site map |
7 |
The "tabindex" attribute specifies the order in which a visitor will move from one active link to another with each press of the TAB key. For example, when you reach a new page and press the TAB key once, the link with the tabindex of 1 (i.e. "Jump to content") will be selected before all the others. Pressing TAB again will select the link with tabindex of 2 ("Programs & Services") and so on.
Notes:
For IE users: If the browser displays the address
bar, by tabbing once you might select the page address (in the address
bar). Only at the second tab will the "Jump to content" link
be selected. If your "Favorites" links list
is displayed, some of these links might also interfere with the use of
the TAB key. It is better to keep your Favorites closed.
The active window's status bar (at the bottom of screen) will display the address of the selected link. For example, the status bar for "Jump to content" link will show the address of the active page plus the string "#startContent". If the active page is "media", the full address displayed will be: www.familyservicetoronto.org/media.html#startContent. For the "Contact us" link, the status bar would show: www.familyservicetoronto.org/contact.html and so on. The only tabbing selection that does not change the address of the status bar is the search engine form.
Also, a visitor’s adaptive technology may select the page header at the first tabbing instead of the desired link, the second tabbing will then select the link with the tabindex of 2.
For IE on a Macintosh plaform users: you must press both the ALT and TAB keys simultaneously in order to jump between links.
Keyboard access to links using scripts
Some pages use scripts to open new windows with full articles or additional content. For these cases, the script can be activated by keyboard (select the link and press the Enter key) or by mouse click.
For visitors that have their scripts disabled, we provided an alternative link to access the same content. This link appears on the page only when the scripts are disabled.
Changing text size
To make sure that our visitors can increase the text size, we used a relative font size across the website. This means that any person wishing to change the text size can do so through the browser menu.
If you need to increase the text size and you are an IE user:
- Select "View" in Explorer's main menu (top of the screen)
- Select "Text Size"
- Choose "Larger" or "Largest"
If you need to increase the text size and you are a Netscape user:
- Select "Edit" in Netscape's main menu (top of the screen)
- Select "Preferences"
- Within "Preferences" menu box, click the "+" or arrow sign next to "Appearance" (left side of the "Preferences" menu box)
- Under "Typeface Size" (right side of the "Preferences" menu box), click the arrow and select a bigger font size than the default.
- Click "OK"
Please be aware that when you change the default settings, the new settings will be active for all sites visited. You can at any time change back to the default by following same steps as above and selecting a smaller type size.
The website pages dedicated to FSA's Seniors and Caregivers program, also includes a little tool that increases or decreases the font size. This tool is located on every Seniors and Caregivers page just under the search engine box.
Images
We use images to enhance the look and feel of our webpages. Some images are purely decorative while others convey information (graphs, charts, posters, photos from events). For all images that convey information that is not specifically described in the text of the page, we provided text alternatives that can be read by assistive technologies or in the little callout that comes up when the mouse goes over the image.
Text and background colours
We chose colours that offer a proper contrast so that the content is accessible to visitors that might have problems perceiving colour. Main page text is black with dark-red or dark-blue headings on a white background. Main menu is white on a dark-grey background. Submenus are black on a light-beige background.
To draw the reader's attention to some portions of text, we used colour highlights (usually dark-red, dark-blue or dark-grey). In these cases, we used proper HTML markup for emphasis that can be read accordingly by assistive technologies.
Animation and screen flickering:
We used animation sparingly (Flash photo slide show on three different pages). We did not use any technique (such as flashes, quick motion of objects on the screen, sudden and repeated changes in color) that could cause the screen to flicker and cause problems with photosensitive epilepsy.
Cascading Style Sheets
This site implements cascading style sheets (CSS). Certain early versions of Netscape (4.x and earlier) and Internet Explorer (3.x and earlier) do not fully support this feature and they will display a CSS webpage differently. However, this will not hinder your access to information.
