Accessibility Statement

Linguistic Access

To ensure meaningful access to our services, all Limited English Proficient (LEP) patients will be provided language assistance services at no cost to them. Language assistance services include 1) interpretation by bilingual staff members, contract interpreters, or telephone interpretation services; 2) translation of particular written or electronically published materials.

TDD (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf) telephone services are available for hearing-impaired patients at Contra Costa Regional Medical Center and some health centers.

Access to Service for People with Disabilities

Contra Costa Health Services is committed to serving the needs of people with disabilities and their families. For any questions or concerns about accessibility to our programs, please contact our Affirmative Action Coordinator, Shelley Pighin, by calling 925-957-5250 or using our online accessibility request form.

Website Accessibility

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." -- Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web

Contra Costa Health Services is committed to providing equal access to our web-based information and services. This document details the specific ways in which that access is provided via this Internet site.

Access Keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key. All pages on this site define the following access keys:

• Access key 1 - Home Page
• Access key 2 - Skip to Main Content
• Access key 3 - Health Topics
• Access key 4 - Services
• Access key 5 - Health Coverage
• Access key 6 - Health Centers & Clinics
• Access key 7 - Search
• Access key 8 - Privacy Policy & Terms of use
• Access key 9 - Contact Us
• Access key 0 - Accessibility Statement
• Access key ! - Spanish pages (español)
• Access key = - Site Map
• Access key x - Validate page

See our Help page on How to Use Access Keys in various popular browsers and platforms.

Standards Compliance

Compliant websites work on the widest range of platforms and maximize potential readership. Here are the standards to which we adhere:

1. All pages on this site which are controlled directly by the Web Engineering Team will validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Each page contains a validation link at the bottom for easy verification, or use access key x.
2. All pages on this site are Section 508 compliant, fulfilling all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
3. All pages on this site are WCAG Level AA compliant, fulfilling all priority 1 & 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
4. All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. <h1> elements are used for main titles, <h3> tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing alt+insert+3.

Navigation aids

1. Where applicable, pages have rel=previous, next, up, and home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers. Netscape 6 and Mozilla users may also take advantage of this feature by selecting the View menu, Show/Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always).
2. All main content pages include a search box. An Advanced Search option is available from the search results page or by using access key 7.

Aural Browser & Braille Support

The Contra Costa Health Services website has been designed from the ground up to be compatible with these readers, for the benefit of those with vision impairments, dyslexia, or others who read with difficulty. Some speech-based browswers also support Braille displays. Common aural browsers include:

1. pwWebSpeak for Windows (speaks English only, Braille not supported)
2. IBM Home Page Reader for Windows (speaks English & Español, Braille support, free demo)
3. Freedom Scientific JAWS for Windows (speaks English & Español, Braille support, free demo)

To learn more about these solutions, visit our Help section page entitled Using Screen Readers to Experience the Web.

Visual design

1. This site uses cascading style sheets for most aspects of visual layout.
2. This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
3. Users of Netscape (6+), Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and other browsers may use control++ to increase the text size and control+- to decrease it.
4. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Links

1. Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target (such as the headline of an article).
2. Links are written to make sense out of context.
3. Links which go to external websites are clearly identified as such.

Images

1. This site's graphics are thoroughly optimized to maintain faster-than-average page loading speeds.
2. All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
3. Complex images include LONGDESC attributes or inline descriptions to explain the significance of each image to non-visual readers.

Web Accessibility References

1. W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
2. W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
3. W3 accessibility checklist, a developer's quick reference to check conformance.
4. U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

Known Problems & Recommendations

1. Search Results page not valid - Our Search Results page is generated externally and is not valid XHTML. The impact of this is minimal but not insignificant. Please report any difficulties you may experience with the Search function to us.
2. Find Function in Acrobat fails under Internet Explorer - This is a bug in Microsoft's browser. The only solution is to use a different browser.
3. Netscape 4.x cannot display the page styles as fully implemented - The site still functions, but does not look the same as in more recent browsers. The only solution is to use a different browser.

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