Help & accessibility

This statement is based on Mark Pilgrim’s Dive into accessibility website, where you can find lots of info.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Internet Explorer, you can press ALT + an access key, then the Enter key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key; in Opera, you can press Shift + Escape + an access key.
The pages on this site define the following access keys:

  • Access key 1—Home page
  • Access key 2—Top of page content (skip navigation links)
  • Access key 3—Site map
  • Access key 4—Search
  • Access key 5—Main navigation menu
  • Access key 6—Write me a message
  • Access key 7—Sidebar
  • Access key 0—Accessibility statement (this page)

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Standards compliance

This site is best viewed with any standards-compliant browser, if you have trouble viewing it, please let me know.
Older, less compliant browsers will display the content of the site without trouble but in a rather “barebones” manner.

These pages should validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional, you can check them on the World Wide Web consortium web site.

I also work to make this site as accessible as possible, but my way of presenting a few features interferes with some AA and AAA guidelines, so they are only A level. Please write if you find any feature of this site prevents you from accessing what you want.

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All pages include a search box (access key 4).

All pages have rel=home links, (and previous, next links if pages are meant to be read in sequence), to aid navigation in text-only browsers. Netscape 6 and Mozilla users can also take advantage of this feature by selecting the View menu, Show/Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always). Opera also displays these info on demand.

Most pages offer a list of related links in the site.

Links to external websites or pages are marked with an icon. Exemple: link.

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Visual design

This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.

This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers. You can adjust the font size to your liking, most of the time using the “View” menu in your browser.

If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

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Glossary

A
Level 1 accessibility checks according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative.
AA
Level 2 accessibility checks according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative.
AAA
Level 3 accessibility checks according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative.
B.D.
Bande dessinée, drawn strip: graphic book using framed drawings with inserted text. Much broader than comics or cartoons, B.D. spans all kinds of genres from comical, detective stories, to historical or psychological. Wikipedia definition of B.D..
CBD
Central Business District: in north-american type cities, downtown mostly devoted to office space housed in skyscrapers.
CROSS
Centres Régionaux Opérationnels de Surveillance et de Sauvetage: regional operational supervision and rescue centers. These 5 centres distributed along the French coasts are in charge of sea search and rescue, shipping traffic, pollution and sea fishing supervision.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets: documents allowing to describe the formatting and appearance of html or xml content. Wikipedia definition of CSS.
IMOCA
International Monohull Class Association: association which administers international 60 feet monohull races.
ORMA
Ocean Racing Multihull Association: association which administers international 60 feet multihull races.
RSS
Really Simple Syndication: XML file format for web syndication used by websites and weblogs to allow users to subscribe to their updates. Wikipedia definition of RSS.
The RSS feed for this website is: http://sophie-g.net/info/e_feed.xml.
SNSM
Société Nationale de Sauvetage en Mer French equivalent of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. SNSM website
URL
Uniform Resource Locator, sequence of characters used for referring to resources (such as pages, documents…) on the internet, by their locations. Web address. Wikipedia definition of URL.
WWII
World War Two, the second world war from 1939 to 1945.
XHTML
Extensible HyperText Markup Language: a markup language used to write internet pages. This language is an evolution of the HTML language, with a XML-compliant syntax. Wikipedia definition of XHTML.

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