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Flying WV
West Virginia University Radio Astronomy Instrumentation Laboratory

About this site

Accessibility

What we aim for, what we know is imperfect, and how to tell us when something gets in your way.

The standard

What we aim for

This site targets WCAG 2.1 Level AA. West Virginia University must meet this standard under two laws. These are Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. We apply the same standard to the lab's site, wherever it is hosted.

Today

Where we are

We use automated checks and manual review to improve access to this site. The lab site carries no analytics or tracking scripts. It serves its WVU Design System styles and navigation script locally. Fonts load from Adobe Fonts, and University logos load from static.wvu.edu. Visiting the site sends requests to those two services.

Specifically, the site aims to:

  • describe every photograph in context rather than by filename
  • keep a single h1 on each page with headings that cascade beneath it
  • give every interactive element a visible keyboard focus indicator
  • mark links inside running text with an underline, not color alone
  • link to canonical records rather than serving PDFs

Honestly

Known issues

We would rather list these than imply the site is perfect.

  • The sidereal clocks at /tools/, and the readings on the two tools beneath them, tick visibly every second. Each of those pages has a Pause button that stops the tick. A screen reader is not interrupted. The tools announce a reading only when you press Update or Convert.
  • The time-lapse on the DSPIRA 2017 page plays only when you press its button. Once playing, it cannot be paused. Reload the page to stop it.
  • The DSPIRA cohort pages are archives of summers that have ended and are not actively revised. If something on them is unusable, tell us and we will fix or retire the page.
  • The stylesheet is served by the University’s Design System, which the lab does not control. A change there could affect this site between our checks.

Get in touch

Telling us about a problem

If any part of this site gets in your way, email rail@wvu.edu. Say which page and what happened; you do not need to know the technical cause. We will reply, and we will tell you what we can fix and when.

For accessibility of West Virginia University’s own web properties, see WVU Digital Accessibility.

Who runs it

About this site’s status

RAIL is a research group in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. The lab maintains this site and is responsible for its content. It is not an official West Virginia University web page.