ocSinet – certification and accessibility
Our highly qualified and experienced programmers ensure that our sites are validated by a series of universally recognised certificates. These guarantee that our XHTML code and our CSS style sheets are in line with W3C standards.
What are accessibility and validation?
- An accessible site is one that can be used by people with disabilities. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people who would otherwise be unable to access the Web.
- W3C WAI: are guidelines that ensure accessibility to your site. They are especially important for all government and public administration sites (see Stanca law) as they are required by law.
- W3C XHTML: this certifies that the code doesn’t contain errors and guarantees optimum functionality thus avoiding possible errors while rendering your site search engine friendly. This ensures perfect legibility of the site for spiders and search bots as well as human visitors! XHTML code validation is a necessary condition for accessibility to the site and can be verified using the W3C HTML validation service..
- W3C CSS: The CSS defines the pagination of a site: this certificate guarantees that all web content (text, images etc.) is placed correctly, avoiding errors such as misalignment or overlapping pictures. The CSS enables pages to be printed accurately. The certification of the CSS is another condition required for full accessibility and is verified with the CSS W3C certificate.
Why is it important to have a valid and accessible site?
Good XHTML and CSS code makes it possible to separate content (written in XHTML code) from graphic elements (written using the CSS style sheet) which has the enormous advantage of allowing a site to be accessed appropriately from differing devices such as computers, palm pilots, cellular phones, printers etc. In short, you can be sure that everyone is seeing your site how you want them to see it regardless of what tool they are using to access it.
Furthermore, certified code guarantees that access and downloading times are kept to a minimum. This lessens your customers waiting times and allows you to take full advantage of your bandwidth and storage space.
Please feel free to try validating the code on our sites using the HTML or the CSS validation process by the independent W3C organisation. Feel free to compare our results with other sits, even without being a programmer you will clearly be able to make your own quality assessments.
ocSinet’s sites have the following characteristics:
- The XHTML code is valid.
- The CSS code is valid.
- They adhere to WAI guidelines, particularly WAI-A.
- It is still possible to read and navigate them even when the CSS and JavaScript are disabled.
- The built in structure that applies to printing avoids pagination errors; visitors won’t have to copy and paste using a word processor to avoid printing useless banners and pictures or cutting pages in the middle. (Check a print preview or print one of these pages).
- They can be correctly viewed using any browsing device!
How does ocSinet approach certification and accessibility?
We decided to make sure that all of our work follows W3C standards and is in line with WAI guidelines: all our sites are certified with XHTML 1.1, CSS 2.1 and have attained WAI-A; please request WAI-AA or WAI-AAA standards if you need them.
What are the advantages of having a certified and accessible site?
- The costs of running and maintaining a site are reduced.
- The pages are lighter and quick to load, even for analogue (read slow) connections.
- Complete compatibility: Windows®, Unix, MacOS, Linux operating systems; Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari etc...; accessible to: PCs, palm pilots, cell phones etc.
- The site is already for technological advances of the future (for instance palm pilots).
- The site can be accessed by everyone.
- Higher rankings on search engines.
- Printed pages are cleaner and avoid pagination chaos.
Test our site by clicking on the W3C icons below...
