About This Tutorial

Coding

This tutorial is designed to comply with Web standards established by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, etc., and follows the best practices for accessible sites using valid and well-formed code that is semantically correct. This site currently uses valid XHTML Transitional 1.0 for markup and valid CSS for control of typography, color, margins, and other presentational elements. All pages and CSS files within the site are checked and validated using W3C's online (X)HTML and CSS Validators. To achieve this goal the librarian/Web designer

• uses the correct DOCTYPE to enable browsers to parse our pages and render them accurately
• validates the code to correct errors or ambiguities related to syntax
• separates style (look, appearance, colors, fonts, layouts) from content by using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

Accessibility

This site follows the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in an effort to remove barriers that restrict access to the Internet or its content. Such barriers include visual impairments, color blindness, mobility, learning impairments, and access barriers imposed by older technology and unconventional user agents, such as wireless devices, cellular phones, laptops, and palm devices. This site

• uses CSS-driven relative font size for general content, which allows users to control the size of the page content
• has alternative text for all images and decorative/positioning graphics and uses “ALT” attributes, which are important for text-based or screen-reading browsers
• provides additional navigational aids
• has meaningful page titles
• identifies the content language
• has detailed and descriptive metadata
• presents main content first within the source to accommodate text-based and screen-reading browsers (please note that the navigation bar is the last division coded in a page)

The Web pages in this tutorial are run across Web-based accessibility checkers, such as Bobby and Cynthia Says Portal to achieve good coding practices.

Copyright

Images reproduced with permission of Larry White and Corbis Corporation under the terms and conditions of the personal use license granted to Monica White. Further reproduction is prohibited without prior written permission from the copyright holder.