The Regulation Room website is designed, maintained and operated by the Cornell eRulemaking Initiative, a group of researchers at Cornell University. The goal of the CeRI team is to make Regulation Room accessible to as many users as possible. We value the feedback you can give us on the accessibility of Regulation Room. So, we hope that you will contact us to tell us about your experience–positive and not so positive–with the site.

CONFORMANCE CLAIM

For the Air Travel Accessibility and subsequent rules, we have updated all content and interactive elements connected with the rule for compliance with the requirements of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, Levels A & AA. We have also conducted extensive screenreader testing to ensure that the most important functionality of the site is accessible to these devices.

Accessibility measures adopted

Among the measures we have taken to increase the accessibility of our site are:

  • We strive to use valid HTML throughout the site.
  • We use well-structured, semantic markup for headings, lists, links, buttons, abbreviations/acronyms, and other special text so browsers and assistive devices can successfully navigate our pages. Tables are used only for tabular data and not for layout, page titles are informative, and multimedia is identified textually.
  • The site is keyboard and screenreader accessible, with the exception of some third-party markup which has been removed from the tab order to eliminate confusion.
  • Site navigation aids are provided in the form of consistent navigation menus and a site map. Recurring elements are displayed consistently.
  • Page navigation for screenreader users is facilitated through skip navigation links that allow the user to go directly to content.
  • To facilitate page navigation and provide a logical workflow for both screenreader and keyboard-only users, after completion of a user interaction focus is returned to the element used to initiate the interaction, or to another logical location.
  • Contrast ratios between text and background and between links and surrounding text meet AA specifications.
  • Form markup is designed for accessibility in JAWS Forms Mode. Forms include descriptive labels associated with all input controls, as well as informative button text.
  • User feedback is provided for all form submissions.
  • Error and status messages are positioned and worded for keyboard and screenreader accessibility.
  • Links are visually consistent. They have meaningful text or title attributes to indicate their purpose, and hover states that use cues other than color.
  • Instructional videos provide synchronized captions as well as audio descriptions of all visual demonstrations. The videos are displayed in JWPlayer, which features keyboard-accessible playback controls.
  • All images that convey content specify meaningful alternative text.
  • There is no flashing content or time limits. Automatic fadeout on informative lightboxes has been replaced by manual close buttons.

Areas of continued effort

We continue to address additional accessibility issues throughout the comment period in order to achieve full A & AA compliance and to provide the best possible experience for a wide range of users. Among the remaining issues we are aware of:

  • Pages exhibit some degradation with text-only magnification, and at the high levels of magnification provided by specialized screen magnifiers.
  • There are keyboard traps in the Firefox browser. This problem does not appear to be specific to the Regulation Room site.

Because there is no automated method that can perfectly measure accessibility, a page may occasionally present difficulties for individual visitors. Please do not hesitate to let us know of any issues that you encounter or if you have suggestions for improvement. Please contact us.

Additional caveats

  • Third-party markup such as the Facebook plugin may continue to fall short of the accessibility standards we have set for the site. This markup has been eliminated from the tab order to reduce confusion for screenreader and keyboard users.
  • Screenreader testing has been conducted using JAWS 12 on Internet Explorer. Users of other products or older versions of JAWS may experience additional difficulties.
  • Prior rules are preserved in their original state for research purposes, and therefore no accessibility upgrades have been applied to them.