Accessibility


The United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme is committed to making its websites accessible, whenever possible, to all users, on all medias, regardless of physical ability, technical knowledge, Internet connectivity speed or availability of specific non-standard software, code interpreters, or plug-ins.

This website conforms to basic Web accessibility recommendations and standards and has been tested with various assistive technologies. We continually review our site and modify pages to remove accessibility barriers for people with disabilities and to make information more accessible to all users. All of our content is checked for plain English (French/Spanish), and we aim to use a written style that is straightforward and understandable.

During the development process, designers followed the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 to ensure the accessibility of the site. The site uses valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.0.


What does that mean in practice?

We follow a list of accessibility guidelines when designing web sites and their content. This includes:

  • Following current web standards and Cascading Style Sheets;
  • Maintaining a standard layout and navigation system throughout;
  • Using headings, lists and website structure in a consistent manner, including CSS to control the website's style;
  • Avoiding the use of frames;
  • Allowing visitors to resize all text;
  • Using plain backgrounds to improve the readability of text;
  • Avoiding excessive images, image maps and use of animation material;
  • Using meaningful alt attributes on all images;
  • Designing layouts to work satisfactorily at a range of screen resolutions;
  • Ensuring all hyperlinks use descriptive and meaningful text, avoiding short-hand language like 'Click here';
  • Always providing an alternative to scripts, applets or plug-ins or other controls which rely on client device capability;
  • Testing on the Windows and MAC platforms and numerous browsers;
  • Using various accessibility checklists and guidelines, including those at the W3C Accessibility Initiative.


Site preferences

The Online Volunteering service website has been designed to allow you some flexibility over the way it looks, a step towards ensuring the accessibility of content to every user. Please note that to use these tools you must have cookies enabled on your browser.


Text size

You can change the size of the text on the Online Volunteering service website. To change the size, please use your browser's built-in text size controls:

  • For Microsoft Internet Explorer use the 'View' menu, select 'Text size' and then choose a size from the list provided.
  • For Mozilla Firefox use the 'View' menu, and select 'Zoom in' or 'Zoom out' from “Zoom” sub-menu as required.
  • For Netscape 6.x use the 'View' menu, select 'Text size' and then choose a size from the list provided.

We are always working to improve the Online Volunteering service website. If you encounter a problem accessing our site, or if you would like to provide feedback, please contact us at info@onlinevolunteering.org.


About accessibility

We encourage our users to learn more about accessibility and apply basic accessibility guidelines to their own websites. There are many resources on the Web about accessibility; however, we recommend the following site as a starting point: the W3C Accessibility Initiative.