Site accessibility
The accessibility features of the Free Range Activism Website are by design rather than relying on added code or tags. The entire site uses a static design, with simple, linear, logically-defined page content to display as clearly as possible, and to be read by assistive technologies more easily.
As part of the recent re-design we have opted to reduce and/or eliminate as many PDF and similar file formats as possible, enabling the content to be more easily read by screen reader technologies. We use a large, well-spaced text layout, and the structure of the pages prioritizes the readability of content over design. The fact we have no scripting, and no advertizing or tracking of any kind, also simplifies our pages.
Page content precedes navigation links to make the use of the TAB key easier – so that pressing TAB quickly cycles through the links in the page. Images are excluded from the list, instead using a caption to provide a readable link. The selected link is highlighted like this.
Link colours on the FRAW site
By convention all links are coloured to indicate where they go:
- blue links connect to other parts of the FRAW site;
- dark red links connect outside of the FRAW site – external links usually open in a new window;
- green links are bookmarks within the current page.
To make navigation easier the site uses ‘access keys’ to provide direct keyboard access. Every link with a hot-key is Xprefixed with a small letter/number indicating the access key for that link. To jump directly to the list of keys below use Hotkey + ‘K’.
Keyboard navigation/‘hot-keys’
The major navigation links use ‘access keys’ accessible from the keyboard. How these keys are used varies according 1to the browser used, but the key ID is the same:
0 Jumps to bookmarks list, where used
A ‘About’ page
C Copyright & Reuse page
D ‘Dysorganization’ page
E ‘Exhibition’ index
F ‘Free Range Network’ main index
K Jumps direct to this list of hotkeys
L ‘Free Range Activism Kit’ page
M ‘Contact’ page
N ‘Posts & News’ index
P Download PDF version of page/resource (where available)
Q Jumps to the ‘Accessibility’ page
R Main index of the ‘Ramblinactivist’s Blogs’ site
S ‘Free Range Subject Index’ page
T Jump to top of the page
U ‘Latest Updates’ section
W ‘WEIRD Journal’ index
X Archive site main index
Z FRAW site index
Where there is a numbered list of links, usually bookmarks in a page, the numbered keys 1 to 9 jump to the sections in the list.
As part of the recent redesign we have tried to eliminate PDF files to make access easier. Though most PDFs follow the recent open document format, older PDFs may use the earlier standard which has limited accessibility. In general, we avoid ‘binary’ file formats, such as word processor or graphical images to communicate essential information. Where images are used they will have descriptive text to explain what they are (we usually use images to space-out/break-up text to make it more readable).
We hope that our attempts, though imperfect due to the limitations of this medium, make access to our information a little easier.