Accessibility

Declaration of Accessibility

The new website for the tourism authority for the Province of Alessandria has been created with the aim of being completely open to all its users and therefore completely accessible.

In order to achieve this, at the planning stage the designers were committed to making the site accessible to the visually impaired and those with motor dysfunctions which make site navigation difficult or impossible.

To this end we followed the protocol established by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), the independent body which sets international standards which guarantee the sharing of objectives and instruments with regard to the publication of material on the web. The branch of W3C that deals with problems of accessibility, the WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) is charged with, amongst other things, preparing the guidelines that concern encouraging and improving access to web content (WCAG – Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).

Notwithstanding this you won’t find any of the instruments in general use for self-declaration of accessibility though automatic validators. Accessibility goes beyond a dedicated instrument that appears on a web page; this is not just a technical question but also a cultural question, both quantitative and qualitative which up to today has always been difficult to quantify. The most important thing for us is not to be certified today but to carry on our work so that the site is easy to use and accessible to all, always.

With regard to accessibility, the fast access keys have not been designated as the layout of our pages will lend themselves to this function, as they are especially dense with links.

The web site is characterised by:

•  High-resolution contrast and readability for the help tools for the visually impaired
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•  Total separation between content and presentation with the use of CSS style pages
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• The possibility of consultation using a text browser
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•  Logical structure and navigation notably improved with respect to the former website thereby improving the end service to the user base
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•  Frames and other obsolete elements that are not valid under the new rules are not used anymore
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•  Tools which can impede access are used only sparingly and only where absolutely necessary (JavaScript, applet java, flash player)

As nobody is perfect, it is almost certain that there will be something that we have overlooked so that there may be problems for certain operating systems and browser readers resulting in distortion or incomplete visualisation. We would therefore welcome your comments or suggestions directly to info@alexala.it