Accessibility Statement

This is the official accessibility statement for the Opera in the Heights web site. For feedback, please contact us.

Accessibility Features

Flash/Multimedia

Using Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA), Adobe Flash Player 9 exposes Flash content to the screen reader.  Along with this, Opera in the Heights has taken a variety of steps to ensure that Flash content is fully accessible.

• Components
  

  We have used pre-built Flash components that have accessible features built into them.

• Keyboard Access
  

  Adobe Flash Player 9 facilitates keyboard access on its own by automatically making mouse defined events accessible via the keyboard.

• Captioning
  

  Any audio within Flash that contains substantive content includes a synchronized text equivalent in the form of captions.

• Control Over Audio
  

  We will build any Flash containing audio such that the audio does not play unless the user initiates it.  This can be accomplished by holding any animation or audio until a user presses a play button.

Images

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

Visual design

1. The Opera in the Heights site uses cascading stylesheets for visual layout.
2. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

The Opera in the Heights site has been developed to allow users to adjust the text size to a level with which they are comfortable using their browser's built-in text-size controls. To adjust text-size in your browser:

• In Internet Explorer v7: Click Page, then navigate to Text Size and choose your desired text-size
• In Internet Explorer v6: Click View, then navigate to Text Size and choose your desired text-size
• In Mozilla Firefox: Either -
  • Click View, then navigate to Text Size and choose your desired text-size, or
  • Hit CTRL + + to increase text size, and CTRL + - to decrease text-size

Links

1. Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target (such as the headline of an article)
2. Links are written to make sense out of context.

Navigation aids

The Opera in the Heights site uses relative links to enhance navigation. These navigation features benefit visitors who use text-only browsers and expose accessibility functions to graphical browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Opera. For example, Opera displays these navigation aids in a toolbar (select View/Navigation Bar to see it.)

Visitors using recent versions of screen readers can navigate the Opera in the Heights site using the following keystrokes:

• H to cycle forwards through the headings.
• Shift + H to cycle backwards through the headings.
• 2 to navigate to the next level 2 heading.
• Shift + 2 to navigate to the previous level 2 heading.
• INSERT + F6 to provide a list of all headings.

Opera in the Heights is mindful that people with disabilities may not always use assistive technology. The free web browser Opera has excellent keyboard navigation that is invaluable to visitors with motor difficulties. In Opera the following keys can be used to navigate headings:

• S to cycle forwards through the headings
• W to cycle backwards through the headings

Standards compliance

1. All pages on the Opera In The Heights site are – to the best of our knowledge – Section 508 approved, complying with all of the Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1998 and Texas House Bill 2819
2. All pages on the Opera in the Heights site validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict.
3. All pages on the Opera in the Heights site use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for page titles, H2 tags for section titles, and H3 tags for subtitles.