Accessibility Statement

Net Shift Media has done our best to make our site easily accessible to users of all platforms, browsers, resolutions, and Internet devices. This includes users who have disabilities, although, by developing our site to meet these guidelines we have ensured a much easier, user-friendly interface for all of our visitors. We have built this site to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines as set out by the W3C. This resource will be continually updated as new accessibility techniques are developed.

Accessibility Checking

Although there are tools available to check a web sites accessibility status, human experience and usability testing are the only possible methods of confirming such accessibility initiatives. We regularly test our web site with common browser features turned off (such as cascading style sheets, javascript, and images) as well as use text browsers to ensure the readability and usability of our work. More importantly we test our site with various web browsers aside from Microsoft Internet Explorer, and also use multiple platforms such as Mac OSX and Linux along with Microsoft Windows.

Web Standards

As part of our accessibility initiative, we have developed our site to meet the XHTML 1.1 Strict spec as laid out by the W3C. These standards ensure interoperability with multiple browsers, as well as platforms, and equally as important – search engines.

Search Engines

Search engines represent the most basic, disabled user on the web. They do not understand images, sounds, video, Flash multimedia, and cannot see your web site the same way you do through a computer screen. Part of our accessibility testing ensures that search engines are able to navigate and index all of the content on our web site, making it easier for you to find us in search engines.

Summary

To summarize what we have done to meet these goals:

All plugin-related content like Flash, QuickTime, Windows Media has alternate content provided for users who are either unable to display such content, have the plug-ins uninstalled or disabled.
All javascript related content has alternate content methods for users who have javascript either disabled, or who cannot display javascript.
Links have been written such that they make sense out of context of the page. For example, we don't use click here for link text, we use descriptive text for all links.
Images make use of the ALT attribute to ensure that users with images turned off, screen readers, and less-capable devices can still understand what the images are.
Titles have been used wherever acronyms are used, to provide full descriptions of the acronym used.

We have built this web site to conform to the XHTML 1.1 "web standard", which includes the following benefits:

Less HTML code means file size is smaller so each web page downloads quicker.
Reduction in file size means less bandwidth for our web server, freeing up resources.
Better compatibility with search engines.

Access Keys

Access keys allow users to navigate throughout a site with the use of keyboard, rather than a mouse. Think of them as shortcut keys for your web site. Access keys are used by pressing ALT + access key (on Windows) or Control + access key (on Macintosh). Note: System settings may override these settings depending on your own personal configuration.

Access Key N - Skip to Navigation
Access Key C - Skip to Content
Access Key F - Skip to Footer
Access Key 1 - Home
Access Key 2 - About
Access Key 3 - Services
Access Key 4 - Portfolio
Access Key 5 - Contact

Why Are We Telling You This?

We want to show you what we consider when we build a web site. We don't simply design something that looks "cool" and then build it without consideration of the many factors that contribute to your site's success. Web usability is the unsung hero of the web; web sites that consider accessibility and usability often succeed while others that are neglectful are destined to fail.

More Information on Accessibility

If you want to read more about web accessibility visit the following links: