Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

In recent years different initiatives have arisen to co-ordinate a set of guidelines aimed at improving website accessibility. Among these we must highlight the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), which forms part of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This organisation has created the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0, the objective of which is to make network content accessible to disabled persons.

In addition to the WAI guidelines considered, by the European Union, de facto regulations, accessibility to Public Administration websites are legal in nature: according to the LSSIEC (LAW 34/2002, of 11 June, which became effective on 12 October 2002) (Law of Information Society and Electronic Commerce) UNE EX 139801 and 139802 (+139803) REGULATIONS must be taken into account. Together with this legal obligatoriness, Organic Law 4/2007, of 12 April, modifying Organic Law 6/2001, of 21 December, on Universities (LOU), the twenty-fourth additional provision establishes the need for University buildings, facilities and outbuildings, including virtual spaces, in addition to services, procedures and information supply, to be accessible to everyone.

For this purpose, one of the main objectives of the UAM website is to enable all users to browse the content of this portal without accessibility problems, regardless of any physical or technical disability.

To this end, the different functionalities of this portal have been studied so that users may access all the contents with greater ease. The main ones include:

• The HTML and CSS code used adapts to formal grammar to guarantee the correct display of content in different browsers.
• The visual characteristics of the portal (type of letter, size, font colour and background, etc.) are defined by means of the style sheet so that the user can adapt the text to his/her needs.
• The semantic structure and composition of the website have been taken into account. Through these, the content of the different templates has been organised taking into account the section headers, lists and all the elements which aid the general comprehension of the website.
• Alternatives for the multimedia content used in the website have been provided (video, flash, audio, etc.).

Keyboard shortcuts

The keyboard shortcuts used by UAM are:

• 0 = Accessibility Statement
• 1 = UAM Home Page
• 2 = Website Map
• 3 = Search
• 4 = Main Menu
• 5 = Contact
• 6 = UAM
• X = Skip to main content

The user of the "accesskeys" or keyboard shortcuts depends on the different browsers:

• Internet Explorer: ALT + shortcut + ENTER
• Firefox: ALT + Shift + shortcut (in old versions ALT + shortcut)
• Opera: SHIFT + ESC + shortcut