Some comments and instructions in this page are for audio browsers and users who browse this site with screen readers. If you can see this paragraph and you are not using a text-only or screen reader browser, either the style sheet for screen viewing didn't load (if so, click on "refresh" to reload the style sheet), or you need to use a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards-supporting browser that has full XHTML 1.0 Transitional and Strict and cascading style sheet (CSS) level 2 support. (For information about these browsers, see Standards-supporting browsers.)

For additional information, see the Accessibility Design and Features page.

Skip navigation

 
 
The following is the main content for the page. 
 

 
by Cynthia A. Lockley
a woman for all seasons

About this Site

[an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive]

Site Design & Contact Information • Access stats • Accessibility features
• PDF file information • Javascript • Web site conventions • WWW help, hints, and technique
• Disclaimers • Copyrights

Site Design and Contact Information

This Web site is designed and maintained by Cynthia A. Lockley; a part-time Web developer and technical editor.award ribbon

The site was first put up in December 1994. Site awards are listed on the Awards page.

This Web site is hosted by Corpsite, the professional Web hosting company. Send comments on any problems with the functional performance of this Web site to:

All links going to other Web sites will open in another window if you have Javascript turned on. Otherwise, they will open in the current browser window.

Note: Play a little mood music while you browse this site:

Joseph Lamb (1887 - 1960) "American Beauty Rag" (1913)
Another favorite: Scott Joplin (1868 - 1917) "Reflection Rag" (1917)

Mood music selections are from Warren Trachtman's Ragtime MIDI Page. Other sources for background music are

Access Stats

For current and monthly server statistics for this site, see The Stats. See the Counters page for access count totals since 1996 for those pages that are tracked. (Not all pages are tracked by this method.)

Search capability of the entire site is available through FreeFind. This is a free service for sites with 3000 pages or less. For the free version of this service, we cannot control the ads.

Support the Site

In Association with Amazon.comBooks purchased through links on this site or by clicking on the Amazon.com logo provide us with up to 8.5% of each sale, which is used to help support the hosting of this site.

Web Site Conventions

Links are checked periodically. Changes to the pages are marked with the following flags: New, Revised, and Updated.

Accessibility Features

This site aims to make the information it provides accessible to everyone including those with physical or mental disabilities and those with slow Internet connections. There are many challenges for Web developers and designers to handle when creating an accessible Web site such as the large variety of screen readers, browsers, platforms, and accessibility needs. What is accessible for one person may not be accessible for another. The site is designed using current standards on Internet Accessibility / Usability to be used by the average user and by users who work with screen readers or audio assistive technology. Each page is designed for and tested in seven popular browsers on both the Macintosh and Windows platforms. Users may choose among five different style sheets to change screen contrast, use font colors suitable for several forms of color-blindness, view as plain text without style formatting, increase font size, or listen with audio readers using the buttons at the bottom of the page. The aural style sheet enables audio-only directions and descriptions and defines tone and pace of the speech in the pages. Tab indexing levels have been added to all hyperlinks to aid users with screen readers to move logically through the pages.

To ensure that we meet or exceed the guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C-WAI), we continually review our site and modify pages to remove accessibility problems for people with disabilities. Each page is tested for compliance with Section 508 and W3C 1-, 2-, and 3-level usability and accessibility requirements. Buttons at the bottom of each page indicate that the page passed the testing for the relevant validator. Users may verify this by clicking on the button to go to the validator and run the test for themselves.

Navigation features include a "skip" link at the top to go directly to the bottom of the page for the search box, navigation links, and style sheet selection for the site. For people using audio assistive technology, there are skip links to go directly to the main content and to the navigation areas on the site. Cascading style sheets (CSS) replace table-defined page layout and spacer graphics so that pages will load as fast as possible and information will be in a logical order.

Images on the site provide alternative descriptive text. However, some browsers or screen readers cannot be relied upon to recognize alternative text. Many but not yet all images contain a title in the image links to compensate for these inconsistencies. A few images also have a long description to provide additional information about important images.

Multimedia aspects for the site are limited. There is no use of video or animation. There are a few sound files used to provide a bit of entertainment in a few places but they are not critical to the use of the site.

Frames are not used to separate sections of the window area to include several different web pages. Web sites with frames are difficult to navigate with a screen reader unless you actually know that frames exist and which frames contain the information for which you are looking.

Most of the pages on this site are available in HTML or ASCII text format, which are easily read by people who use screen readers. However, some of our information is provided only in Adobe PDF format. Some of the newer PDF files are created with accessible features. Users can convert older PDF files to an accessible format using the Adobe® Acrobat® Reader™ with Accessibility.

Standards-supporting browsers

These pages are designed with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) level 2 without the use of tables for the page layout.

The CSS style sheets are available for audio, screen, printing, and printing in large font styles. Selection buttons for each style are available at the bottom of each page. In most browsers that support cookies, a cookie is set so that your selection is remembered for all the pages you look at in the site. It is reset if you choose a different style. If you resize the window with the resize button or by pulling the edge of the window in or out, the layout may get a little out of whack temporarily. The page will refresh automatically to readjust the layout.

If your browser doesn't support cookies or you've turned cookies off, you may use the buttons at the bottom of each page to reselect the style of your choice when you go to another page.

Several workarounds were required to get the CSS to format as desired in all the browsers. Not all browsers provide full World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards support at this time. If you are having problems with any of our pages, first clear your browser's disk cache files and refresh the page to make sure you are seeing the latest pages. Use the latest version of the browser for your operating system. See Standards-supporting browsers for links to the latest browsers that provide CSS support.

The CSS is tested and works on the following browsers:

  • Mac Platform
    • Camino 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1+link to download the Firefox browser
    • Firefox 0.8, 0.9, 1.0+, 2+
    • Lynx 2.8.4+
    • Netscape 7.2, 8+, 9+
    • Mozilla 1.5, 1.6, 1.7+
    • Opera 6.0.3, 7, 9+
    • Safari 1+, 2+
  • Windows Platform
    • Firefox 0.8, 0.9, 1.0+, 2+
    • Lynx 2.8.4+
    • Netscape 7.1 [Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)], 8+, 9+
    • Opera 7, 9+

The CSS is tested and works (with workarounds to compensate for non-compliance with the CSS level 2 standards) on the following browsers:

  • Windows Platform
    • IE 7 on Windows XP and Vista
    • IE 6.0.2800.1106 Update versions: SP1; Q330994 on Windows 2000
    • IE 6 (Service Pack 2) on Windows XP

It is known that the pages do not work as designed in the following browsers because they don't support Cascading Style Sheets or they support them but not to the full standards. However, the CSS is designed to degrade gracefully for these browsers so you will still be able to navigate the site but you won't have the colors or layout design.

  • Mac Platform
    • Netscape 4.x and below
    • iCab
  • Windows Platform
    • IE 6 and below
    • Netscape 4.x and below

to top button Return to the top

Specified fonts and page width

Relative font sizes are used, which allows users to increase or decrease the font size in the browser's View menu. We have also made two style sheets for text only views: one for printing the page and one in a large font size for users who need larger text. For examples of readable and unreadable onscreen fonts, see the Fonts Comparison table. Fonts used in this site are specified in ems and percents so they may be resized according to the user's preferences. Except in the Windows platform, the hierarchy for the fonts specified in the font family is Verdana (or Trebuchet MS), Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, and sans-serif. In the Windows platform, the hierarchy for the fonts specified in the font family is Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, and sans-serif. Your browser will use the first font in the list that you have installed on your computer. The first choice font is Microsoft®'s wide Verdana font and the Trebuchet MS font. These TrueType® fonts were designed to improve the challenges of onscreen display with clear distinctions between similar letters such as the lowercase i j l, the uppercase I J L, and the number 1 and is a humanist sans serif designed for easy screen readability. Trebuchet MS and the wider width Verdana fonts are installed with Microsoft's Office and Internet Explorer applications. For information about the fonts and for links to free font utilities, see Microsoft's Typography Web site.

This Web site is Macintosh logotype computer with BBEdit logotype

to top button Return to the top

PDF file information

Some hypertext links may take you to Portable Document Format (PDF) files you can view in your Web browser. PDF file links are marked by the PDF icon ( PDF file ). PDF files are extremely compact, platform-independent, and easy to create. They offer design control, print-ready documents, and an endless array of authoring applications. PDF is an extension of the Encapsulated PostScript format that allows hypertext linking. Some PDF files may contain hypertext links that take you to another location in the PDF file or to another Web page. The hypertext links are indicated by a hot spot in the PDF file where the cursor changes to a hand with a pointing finger. Use the Back button to return to previous pages in the Web browser or to return from the PDF viewer to the HTML viewer.

 

PDF Error Message Note:  If you are using Netscape Communicator® 4.0 or you get a message that says "invalid color space, suppress further errors", or blank boxes appear in place of text, you will need to upgrade your PDF reader plug-in to the latest version of Acrobat® Reader™. It is FREE from Adobe®. Some PDF files are saved with accessibility and search capabilities for screen readers. The Acrobat Reader, full version has accessibility and search capabilities. For more information about Adobe Acrobat accessibility, see the Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Reader, and accessibility: FAQs. After installing the Reader, use the Help menu to select "Updates..." to be sure you have the latest version. The Adobe® Web site provides good technical support in their Support Knowledgebase. For example, solutions for printing problems with an Acrobat 5-7 PDF file on Windows; and solutions for printing problems with an Acrobat 5-7 PDF file on Mac OS.

Javascript

Some pages on this site use JavaScript™ 1.0 or 1.1, which is supported by Netscape Navigator® 3.0 or later and Internet Explorer® 4 or later. If you have disabled Javascript™, you may want to turn it on to use the features and enhancements provided by JavaScript™. For information about fixes to browser security problems, see http://browser.netscape.com/

Surfer WWW help, hints, and technique

You can find helpful information in my World Wide Web Resources page. It provides links to sources for audio, browsers, graphics and icons, HTML and SGML guides, information about publishing on the Web, and related software and tools. Tutorials and additional guidelines are also available to members of the HTML Writers Guild. Use a variety of Web search engines provided on the Search the Web page to look for additional resources, people, places, and things. If you are new to the World Wide Web and want to learn how to create your own home page, see my presentation and workshop about The World Wide Web and How to Get into It.

Disclaimers and copyrights

For information about disclaimers, opinions, product endorsements, and copyrights on this site, see:

Site Design & Contact Information • Access stats • Accessibility features
• Standards-supporting browsers • Javascript • Specified fonts and page width
• PDF file information • Web site conventions • WWW help, hints, and technique
• Disclaimers • Copyrights

to top button Return to the top