Accessibility Statement

The American Council of the Blind of Ohio (ACBO) believes that every website can and should be accessible to people with disabilities. This website and the accessible design principles used for developing it can serve as a model for others who wish to create universally accessible websites.

The ACBO’s website is designed to conform with the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 (link is external) Level AA.

In addition, ACBO’s website includes enhancements which promote accessibility and usability for all visitors including those who are blind or visually impaired. These enhancements include:

• Sitecues – a free assistive technology that is built into every page and offers speech and zoom tools. More information on sitecues can be found below.
• ARIA landmarks are used for the banner, navigation, main content and footer sections on each page. Landmarks can aid navigation when using a screen reader.
• Headings are used for each major section of content on each page giving users of screen readers an easier way to navigate through the content.
• Unique and descriptive link names are used to prevent confusion and provide clear context for users of screen readers.
• Alternate text descriptions have been applied to all images to ensure the message being conveyed is accessible to all users.

ACBO asserts that all websites should be accessible to people with disabilities. We urge all web developers to create sites accessible to all. Though the ACBO site includes links to other websites, we cannot guarantee that these sites comply with web accessibility standards. ACBO encourages visitors who find web accessibility problems to contact the website owners and ask them to comply with accessibility recommendations.

If you find any aspect of ACBO’s website inaccessible or difficult to use, please contact ACBO with your feedback.

Sitecues Speech and Zoom: Help Tips

sitecues makes it easier to see, hear and use this website.

Zoom the entire web page or the parts that most interest you. You can even listen to sitecues speak the text aloud.

Page Zoom

With the mouse, hover over the sitecues icon and use the slider to zoom in and out.

You can also simply press + or - to zoom with the keyboard — please see the full list of keyboard tips below.

One-Touch Read

The One-Touch Read feature zooms in on your selected content — and can also read it to you aloud. One-Touch Read is enabled once sitecues zoom or speech is turned on.

Zoom part of a web page

• Start by moving your mouse to something you want to read. It should be highlighted (if it isn’t, make sure zoom or speech have been enabled in sitecues).
• Press the spacebar to zoom the highlighted area.

Listen to part of a web page

First, turn on speech:

• With the mouse, hover over the Sitecues icon and click on the speech button
• Hover the mouse over text that you want to read, then press the spacebar
• Alternatively, select text using the mouse and it will be read aloud

Keyboard Commands

Zooming the page

• + to zoom in
• - to zoom out
• Hold these keys down longer to zoom or unzoom for longer

One-Touch Zoom

• If nothing is highlighted yet, press Spacebar to highlight something near the center of the screen.
• Move the highlight around with the Up / Down / Left / Right arrow keys.
• Press Spacebar again to zoom the highlighted area.
• Next press Escape to close the zoomed area. Pressing Escape a second time will also clear highlighting.
• Navigate quickly with H / Shift+H to move forwards/backwards by heading.

One-Touch Read (Speech)

• Press Alt+Quote to turn speech on or off
• Now, the One-Touch command (Spacebar) will also read text.

Exploring with Speech

Pressing the Shift key while moving the highlight tells sitecues to read highlighted areas.
There are several ways to use it:

• Shift+arrow to move and read in the given direction
• Shift while moving the mouse to read whatever the mouse moves over
• Shift by itself to read the current highlight

Using shift to speak works whether or not speech is turned on in the sitecues panel.

Other Cool Shortcuts

You can zoom the page with your mouse. Try holding down Control key while rolling your mousewheel.

Quitting sitecues

To quit sitecues, either turn off both zoom and speech, or press Alt+Shift+0.