Accessibility

The website of the Design museum Gent has been adapted to be accessible for all internet users, including mobile users, blind users visiting via screen readers and handicapped people. It takes into account the web accessibility guidelines of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

Structure and layout

For the layout of the site, separate Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) files are used to adapt the presence of the site to different user groups. Thanks to these files the site gets a print friendly layout when printed and is scaled when viewed on the small screen of a mobile phone.
The page structure is built without the use of tables. Layout tables are spreading the content of a page as a puzzle, which makes it harder for mobile phones and screen readers to read.
All images have an ALT-tag, which is a short description which can be read by screen readers of the blind and can be displayed as alternative text when images are not displayed.
An easy to use menu structure makes that all pages are easy to find.
Layout and content are separated, which gives a clean code and helps search engines to index the site.

Font size

The font size can be changed by the visitor. If the letters are to small, the reader can increase their size and the readability. There are different ways to change the font size:

Click on the large and small letter A under the main menu to change between normal and large font.
Use the menu of your browser to change the font size (in Internet Explorer go to View > Text size).
Turn the wheel of your mouse while pressing the CTRL-button.

Access keys

The menu can be used via the keyboard. Access keys have been defined, keyboard combinations that allow browsing through the menu without having to use the mouse. This can help people with motoric problems to navigate.

In Windows: press ALT + access key + enter to select and view the menu item. For the Opera browser, first activate with Shift + Esc the access key function and press then the character of the menu item.
In Macintosh: press Control + access key.
Access keys for each menu item:
- Introduction - i
- What's new - w
- History - h
- Collections - o
- Exhibitions - e
- Digital photo archive - g
- Educational department - d
- Practical information - p
- Sitemap - m
- Search - s
- Links - l
- Contact - c
- Accessibility - a

Browser compatibility

The website has been tested and adapted to function correctly in the most important browsers of the moment: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera en Safari.

[ back to top ]