Accessibility statement

Keyboard shortcuts

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key (this also depends on the browser used). In this website the following keyboard shortcuts are defined:

• access key 1 - link to home page
• access key 9 - feedback and helpdesk
• access key 0 - link to accessibility statement (this page)
• access key l - link to login
• access key r - link to references
• access key p - link to reports
• access key s - link to Species module
• access key h - link to Habitat types module
• access key t - link to Sites module
• access key 3 - link to site map
• access key g - link to glossary
• access key u - link to GIS Tool
• access key b - link to introduction on EUNIS Database

Standards compliance

• the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WAI-AA)
• pages validate XHTML 1.0 Transitional
• pages validate HTML 4.01
• the Cascading Style Sheets implemented respect the CSS2 Specification
• the web site is still usable without style sheets
• there are still some special pages, like the GIS Tool - implemented in Macromedia Flash and some pages where navigation is based heavily on JavaScript and specific HTML elements where equivalent accessible page content can't be provided and the browsers which don't implement JavaScript will experience reduced functionality. Special measures where taken to announce the user when some functionality is available only on some browsers.

Navigation aids

• the bread crumb trail - links to all parent folders from the current location to the root
• the navigation for the regular end-users does not imply opening of pop-ups windows (note that some of the administrative pages with more complex functionality do) and the return to the previous page can be easily done through the back button from the browser
• an accessibility link to the main content for every page is provided

Links

• links have TITLE attributes which describe the link
• links' names make sense out of context
• the links' color is chosen to contrast sufficiently with the background color, and they are distinguishable by having a different text-decoration. Users can choose a personalized theme for the web site.
• visited links and active ones are marked with different colors

Images

• all content images used in the website include descriptive ALT attributes
• purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes so they will not be interpreted by speech synthesizers

Visual design

• this website uses cascading style sheets (CSS2) for visual layout
• only relative font sizes are used, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers
• the website uses color safely. The pages layout is designed in web safe colors
• if your browser or browsing device used does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable and comprehensible

Content structure and other specific elements

• The HTML code of every page starts with the appropriate DOCTYPE declaration
• The language is identified on every page of the web site
• The heading(s) element of every page - h5 and h6 - have a title specific to he page content:
• Semantically correct markup: the content is well structured and uses the correct HTML tags for the various semantic elements (headers, lists, accessible table information, etc.)
• The web site does not uses frames, multimedia content (video, audio)
• JavaScript is necessary to be enabled in some of the more complex pages
• LABELs are used for all visible form elements
• Tables linearize correctly - web site can be used in text based browsers like Lynx
• Metadata information is present in all pages
• TITLEs are used in every page to provide enhanced user experience and accessibility