This site has been designed to be as usable as possible for screen readers and keyboard-only use. Details of the accessibilty features on the site are given below.
Skip the Menus
Each page on the site has a link, shown at the upper right as "Skip to the Main Content," that lets you jump directly to the main content on the page. The left and top menus are ignored.
Change the Text Size
So that this site and the text are resizable, our text styles and tables (except for the left navigation area, which has to stay one size) use proportional sizes and percentages rather than fixed sizes and widths.
You can change the font size of all the text by changing the web browser settings in your browser's View menu. In Internet Explorer, for example, the options are View > Text Size > Larger or Largest.
Note also that pressing Ctrl and + zooms up all Firefox and Internet Explorer pages (not just ours)--the text and pictures both get larger. Pressing Ctrl and - makes them smaller.
For more information about built-in accessibility options, pick your browser:
Some of the files available for downloading are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. To view these files, you will need to have the Acrobat Reader software, which you can download from Adobe's website.
Web Anywhere, a web-based screen reader for the web built at the University of Washington, requires no special software on your computer and lets you access the web aurally from any computer you happen to have access to.
Browsealoud reads web pages aloud for people who find it difficult to read online. To use Browsealoud, you need to download and install the software. When it is running, you can have the text read aloud simply by moving the mouse over the text. You don't have to click or select the text.
We recommend ZoomText as a quick, relatively inexpensive, and painless way to find out about screenreaders and magnifiers. (We use it to test sites for screenreader accessibility.) You can download a demo copy from their site.