Accessibility

the International Symbol of Access (ISA), also known as the (International) Wheelchair Symbol, consists of a blue square overlaid in white with a stylized image of a person in a wheelchair, which is maintained as an international standard, ISO 7001 image of the International Commission on Technology and Accessibility (ICTA), a committee of Rehabilitation International (RI)

The Scott Cooley Cloud (this website) launched in 2007 on Google Sites - a wiki/web site creation tool, content management system, and cloud publishing platform within the Google Apps suite used for design, content authoring, development, publishing, and hosting - is optimized for the Google Chrome web browser. As such, screen readers designed to work with Internet Explorer may not be sufficient. While we have not undertaken the effort to determine whether or not www.scottcooley.com meets or exceeds levels of requirements set forth in any formal accessibility standards or guidelines such as WCAG, we assume that Google Sites itself does conform with some of them. Scott uses this combination of technologies for his web site because they are free, and his modest budget as an independent recording artist does not currently allow for paid web hosting.

Let's face it, just like with Scott's singing, instrument-playing, and music engineering skills (or lack thereof), when it comes to web development, it should be obvious Scott is also an amateur who really has no idea what he's doing, and doesn't sweat the details too much. Since Scott has extremely shallow pockets, and quite a few friends in the legal community, attempting to file any sort of legal claim against him for this site will likely prove to be a fruitless endeavor. That said, he does care fairly deeply about accessibility, and thus you are encouraged to use the Contact page to point out anything that is not accessible for your abilities, and Scott will do whatever is in his power to provide remediation and improve your visitor experience if reasonably possible. A lifelong learner, Scott is in the process of self-educating on web accessibility and has plans to improve this aspect of the site in the future.

Using Google Sites With A Screen Reader

Google Sites supports screenreader programs for both PC and Mac.

Specifically, Sites supports JAWS if you're working on a PC, and ChromeVox if you're working on a Mac. JAWS works best in Firefox 3.6 or above, and ChromeVox works in the latest versions of Chrome.

If you'd like to install JAWS or ChromeVox, visit the links below for instructions:

Download and install JAWS
Download and install ChromeVox

If you're using ChromeVox, you may find this tutorial and this list of keyboard shortcuts useful.

Note: Screen reader support in Google Sites relies on ARIA standard live-regions. If your screen reader doesn't support live-regions some functionality won't accessible to you. This is a known issue with some versions of Apple VoiceOver.

These instructions are written with keyboard instructions for PC users. If you're working on a Mac, use the Command (Apple) key wherever the Control key is listed.

Navigate using your Tab key

To navigate around the pages of this website, use the Tab key to locate different elements of the page and the Enter to complete an action, such as submitting a form. At any time, you can search this site or any page by pressing the / key, which places your cursor in the search box.

Useful shortcuts

You can also visit the full list of keyboard shortcuts for Google Sites for a more comprehensive look.