In the design and programming stages of the project for the creation of the institutional www.notariato.it website, the highest attention was paid to accessibility and usability of the website to ensure that it would conform with the WCAG 1.0 guidelines set out in the international WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) standard. This is an initiative of the global W3C consortium which deals with standardization of the design of websites. Care was taken so that the site would also be in accordance with the technical requirements as set out in the Ministerial Decree of the “Stanca” law (law 2/2004 “Measures to promote access of disabled people to information technology tools”) as regards color contrast.
In fact, the
www.notariato.it website was created with the objective of re-designing a site which would not only have improved performance and better graphics, but would also conform to accessibility guidelines and be configured to easily be modified for changes to these guidelines.
Making a site accessible means giving anyone the possibility of fully accessing all the contents, the information and the services available on the site independently from their operating system, the tools they use for navigation (tools other than mouse, keyboard and monitor), the settings of the browser and internet connection speed. Access is therefore extended to those who because of disabilities, need to use special technologies or specific configurations to assist them.
From the technical point of view, the layout of the pages was done in XHTML 1.0 Strict and layout was done exclusively using CSS style sheets; they do not contain frames or flash objects which are not accessible and nested tables were not used. In addition:
· Information in non-text media are also available through text equivalent information (all content containing images have a description in the ALT attribute, decorative images have an ALT attribute with null content): text and graphics are therefore comprehensible even if visualized with background images deactivated
· The structure was created using the markers necessary to enable correct interpretation from multiple browser systems
· Pages are accessible even if JavaScript is not supported or disabled in the user’s browser system
· Fonts have been formatted with relative sizes, compatible with user preferences specified in the user’s browser under the option “font size”
· Forms have been formatted to enable users to access information, fill in fields and send data through multiple user agents
· all contents can be accessed even for browsers which cannot interpret CSS correctly
· The site can be navigated properly with assistive navigation technologies
The website is optimized for the following browsers:
· Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8
· Mozilla FireFox 3
· Safari 3 and 4
· Opera 9
If a previous version of one of the those browsers or a different browser is used, there may be problems with some functionality and limited access to some services
To improve usability, Accesskeys (quick access keys) were defined to make it possible to go directly to a link by clicking on a series of keys. These “short-cuts” can be activated in Windows by clicking on "Alt Accesskey", and in Macintosh operating systems by clicking on "Ctrl Accesskey".
On all pages, the following AccessKeys were defined:
ALT x – Go to page contents
ALT y - Go to page side menu
ALT z - Go to service menu
ALT a - Go to selections menu
ALT b - Go to main menu
ALT 1 - Go to the:Find notary section
Alt 2 - Go to the:Find district section
Alt 3 – Go to the:Find record section
Alt 4 - Go to the:FAQ section
Alt 5 - Go to the:Guides section
Alt 6 - Go to the:Studies and white papers section
Alt 7 - Go to the:Glossary section
In order to continue to improve our level of service we encourage you to contact us at
cnn.comunicazione@notariato.it with any recommendations or observations regarding the site.
