West Michigan Live, LLC
Contact Us: info@westmichiganlive.com
PH: 616.307.5423
FX: 413.556.7892

Purpose

This policy establishes the minimum standards for Web page accessibility for web pages or sites designed and published by West Michigan Live, LLC. Any and all documents established after September 1, 2003 will, at the least, conform to the minimum requirements issued in the proposed guidelines stated herein.

It is the policy of our company that information and services on web pages or sites designed by West Michigan Live are to be designed to be accessible for all people, regardless of their level of physical ability. With this in mind, the following policy of acceptable standards is set forth in this document.

Be it known, however, that we are not responsible for accessibility conformance on any sites or pages that are linked to, from any sites that are designed by West Michigan Live. Only sites or pages explicitly designed by us will be held to the accessibility standards detailed in this document.

Web Accessibility Policy

The Wordwide Web Consortium (W3C) has developed accessibility guidelines for World Wide Web sites and pages. The West Michigan Live Web Design endorses the W3C's comprehensive Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 - W3C Recommendation 5-May-1999 as the standard for World Wide Web accessibility and will comply with those guidelines.

The standards of the Federal Rehabilitation Act (Section 508) are consistent with the W3C Guidelines and provide achievable, well documented guidelines for implementation. Effective September 1, 2003, all web pages published or hosted by this company on of after the aforesaid date must achieve a minimum level of compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0), which were compiled by W3C's   Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Exceptions to this policy may be granted where compliance is not possible or may require extraordinary measures.

All pages will meet or exceed Conformance level Double-A. This means that all Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints will be satisfied. A resonable attempt will be made to satisfy Priority 3 checkpoints. This being accomplished, the subjected page or site will then meet and qualify for Conformance level Triple-A. The level of accessibility conformance will be posted on the qualifying pages if permission is granted by the client of the designer.

The 14 Checkpoints of WCAG 1.0, which will be used for evaluation, are detailed below. There are links to detailed descriptions of each checkpoint.

• 1 Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content
• 2 Don't rely on color alone to relay information
• 3 Use markup and style sheets and do so properly
• 4 Clarify natural language usage
• 5 Create tables that transform gracefully
• 6 Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully
• 7 Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes
• 8 Ensure direct accessibility of embedded user interfaces
• 9 Design for device-independence
• 10 Use interim solutions
• 11 Use W3C technologies and guidelines
• 12 Provide context and orientation information
• 13 Provide clear navigation mechanisms
• 14 Ensure that documents are clear and simple

A list of web browsing software, and evaluation and correction tools that will be used to test access and graceful degradation of documents designed by this company are:

1. IE 5 - 7.
2. Opera 5 - 9
3. Netscape 6 - 9
4. Firefox 2
5. Lynx (a text-only browser)
6. Alternative Browsers (assistive technology for the visually or physically impaired)
7. W3C HTML Validation
8. W3C CSS Validation
9. A-Prompt (a tool used to check and correct for access)
10. Web XACT (scans files for quality, accessibility, and privacy.

Operating systems on which documents will be tested:

1. Windows 95
2. Windows XP Home and Pro
3. Windows Vista

All reasonable attempts will be made to comply with checkpoints of W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative.