Standardsand Best Practices
Not only do web standards help us as developers, they also help your clients, and their audience. By conforming to today's standards and accessibility guidelines, you can ensure that the content is available to all users, regardless of the device they use to access it.
- Automated publishing technologies are used to increase speed of development and ease of maintenance. Fixed update contracts can be put in place to keep content up to date and relevant. All master content held in MS Word documents making content easily accessible.
- All popular browsers supported (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari). Fixed maintenance contracts can be setup to keep content compatible with changes in future technology.
- JavaScript (AJAX) and Flash is used in the right combination for speed of development, maintenance, and accessibility.
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Web pages are in XHTML (W3C Validates XHTML 1.0 Strict), Conforming to W3C level 2 – 3 accessibility. Follow WebAIM guidelines
- We have developed templates for over 40 interactive activity types including –
- Matching audio to image, match text to image, matching phrase to phrase, matching gap filling, type in text gap filling, drop down choices, type in text with check, recoding and model, dialogue sequence, highlight letters, words or phrases, insert phrase dividers, re-order words, re-write words or sentences.
- Video / audio player, embedded audio, slideshows, drop down information boxes, Techphonetic characters, embedded Flash, mp3, FLV.
- Easily extendable to support new features and activities.
- Developed over two years and currently produced 24 web sites (5,500 interactive pages).
- SCORM and AICC compatible.
How we improve accessibility
- Follow W3C standards
- Provide full keyboard accessibility for all interactions including accessible drag and drop. Providing the same output in HTML for all users.
- Forms use dynamic label tags to indicate marked answers and progress to make it more convenient to access using assistive technologies such as JAWS.
- JAWS only visible links and shortcuts to aid navigation. Access keys for all standard links / buttons.
- Test with popular access technology: The JAWS screen-reader software and ZoomText for visually impaired users. We also test with Dragon Naturally Speaking for users with major physical disabilities who use speech recognition.
- Avoidance of certain colour combinations that may reduce accessibility for users with colour blindness and dyslexia checked using Vischeck.
- Increased contrast between background and text for readability purposes validated by Colour Check (ETRA).
- Ensuring that fields in online forms and all interactive controls can be navigated with the 'Tab' key and SPACE bar for accessible drag and drop. This is particularly useful to users that cannot use the mouse, whether this is for mobility reasons or due to a visual impairment.
- Use of alternative text to describe the content of a picture. This aids those using text-based browsers and users with visual impairments.
- Provide control over text re-size. This is especially useful for supporting for a wide range of visual abilities and screen resolutions.
Typical web server minimum specification
When a database or LMS is used the following server specification is required.
|
Web server |
Microsoft IIS version 4+ Recent distribution of Linux recommended for Moodle |
|
Database |
Microsoft SQL 2000+ |
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Server side code language |
ASP or PHP v5 + |
|
Moodle install |
Recent distribution of Linux OS |
Typical minimum computer specification
|
Processor |
2GHz |
|
Memory (RAM) |
256MB (more required with Windows Vista or 7) |
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Operating system |
Windows XP/Vista/7 32 or 64bit or Mac OS X 10.4/10.5 or a recent Linux distribution |
|
Browser |
Internet Explorer v7, v8 |
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Plugins |
Flash v7 or above (used for Audio / Video content) |
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Internet connection |
512kbps |
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Hard disk capacity |
1GB |
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Video card |
High color / 16 thousand colors and above |
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Monitor screen size |
15 inch |
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Screen resolution |
800x600 minimum - recommended 1024x768 |
|
CD/DVD-ROM drive |
DVD-Drive if content is distributed on disc. |
