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Digimap Accessibility Statement

This is the official accessibility statement for the Digimap service. It applies to each Digimap Collection. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us on edina@ed.ac.uk.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press Alt and an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Ctrl and an access key (depending on which browser you use).

Access Keys for all pages in the Digimap Service are defined as follows:

  • Access key 1 - Digimap Collections Page
  • Access key 2 - Help
  • Access key 3 - Logout
  • Access key 4 - EDINA Home Page
  • Access key 5 - Terms of Use
  • Access key 9 - Contact EDINA
  • Access key 0 - Accessibility Statement

Standards compliance

  1. The pages within the Digimap service comply with all priority 1 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
  2. The pages within the Digimap service should validate as HTML 4.01 Transitional.
  3. Where applicable, pages in this service use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags and lower for subtitles.
  4. Due to the increased functionality Digimap Carto has to be a Java Application. As such it will run on Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP, Mac OSX and LINUX when the Java Plug-in (v1.31) (or higher) is installed on your machine. This is available free from the Sun website (opens in new window).
  5. The downloadable maps and data are not encoded for accessibility. Please see the section "Accessibility of downloaded maps and data" below for more details.

Navigation

  1. Every page has a global toolbar. This precedes the main content of the page, and can include the following links: "Contact Us", "Help" and "Log-Out". These links all open in new windows when opened in a JavaScript enabled browser.
  2. The help page works by a series of expandable links on the left side of the browser. Relevant help pages can be accessed from each of the headings. The help page is context sensitive as accessing it from pages within the Digimap service will take you to the most relevant title or section.

Links

  1. Links are written so that they make sense when read out of context.
  2. Where images are used as the link item, the alt text of the image should be the same as the title text for both the image and the link.
  3. When a link leads away from the web site, a new browser window will open. This should be noted in the title of the link.

Images

  1. Any content images used in this service include descriptive alt attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null alt attributes.

Visual design

  1. This service uses tables for visual layout. Where used solely for layout purposes, table headers are not used, and no summary attribute is used.
  2. This service uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
  3. Style sheets are used to designate font size and colour, both in "ordinary" text and linked text, and background and other visual layout aspects of tables.
  4. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.
  5. Digimap Classic uses frames in the presentation of information. The left-hand frame displaying legend information and the right-hand frame showing the map data.

Accessibility of downloaded maps and data

Owing to the nature of the maps available through Digimap it is not possible to offer an alternative for the visually impaired. Maps displayed on the website are identified as a 'Clickable Map' and have their extents in co-ordinate form in the alt attributes. Data available through Digimap is intended for use in a user's own application software.

Problems with Accessibility

We at EDINA have tried to make the Digimap service as accessible as possible within the constraints of technology and cartographic data on offer. If you are still experiencing difficulties please contact the EDINA helpdesk:

  • Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
  • Phone: 0131 650 3302
  • Fax: 0131 650 3308