The Water and Power Retirement Plan has specifically tried to make this website as accessible as possible to all members of the public. This web site uses HTML designed to properly display in a wide variety of browsers and text readers and to "fail gracefully" when using those features that may not be supported so that our information is most legible and understandable.

We have tried to

Create documents that work even if the user cannot see and/or hear. Provide information that serves the same purpose or function as audio or video in ways suited to alternate sensory channels as well. This does not mean creating a prerecorded audio version of an entire site to make it accessible to users who are blind. Users who are blind can use screen reader technology to render all text information in a page.

Create documents that do not rely on one type of hardware. Pages should be usable by people without mice, with small screens, low resolution screens, black and white screens, no screens, with only voice or text output, etc.
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

We have attempted to follow the accessibility guidelines of both the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) as well as the well-respected City of San Jose.

An excerpt of the WC3 Guidelines appears below. To see the guidelines in their entirety see their website, http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505/:

1. Provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content. Provide content that, when presented to the user, conveys essentially the same function or purpose as auditory or visual content.
2. Don't rely on color alone. Ensure that text and graphics are understandable when viewed without color.
3. Mark up documents with the proper structural elements rather than with presentation elements and attributes.
4. Clarify natural language usage. Use markup that facilitates pronunciation or interpretation of abbreviated or foreign text.
5. Create tables that transform gracefully. Ensure that tables have necessary markup to be transformed by accessible browsers and other user agents.
6. Ensure that pages featuring new technologies transform gracefully. Ensure that pages are accessible even when newer technologies are not supported or are turned off.
7. Ensure user control of time-sensitive content changes. Ensure that moving, blinking, scrolling, or auto-updating objects or pages may be paused or stopped.
8. Ensure that the user interface follows principles of accessible design: device-independent access to functionality, keyboard operability, self-voicing, etc.
9. Design for device-independence. Use features that enable activation of page elements via a variety of input devices.
10. Use interim solutions. Use interim accessibility solutions so that assistive technologies and older browsers will operate correctly.
11. Where it is not possible to use a W3C technology, or doing so results in material that does not transform gracefully, provide an alternative version of the content that is accessible.
12. Provide context and orientation information to help users understand complex pages or elements.
13. Provide clear navigation mechanisms. Provide clear and consistent navigation mechanisms to increase the likelihood that a person will find what they are looking or at a site.
14. Ensure that documents are clear and simple. Ensure that documents are clear and simple so they may be more easily understood.

An excerpt of the City of San Jose Disability Access Standards appears below. To see the standards in their entirety see the City of San Jose Disability Access Standards webpage, http://www.ci.san-jose.ca.us/oaacc/disacces.html

1. Provide a link from the main page to a page entitled "Access Instructions" for users with disabilities. This page will provide instructions for access to the City web pages for persons with disabilities.
2. Support text browsers directly on the page or have an alternative text page displaying the same information.
3. If a document is posted in Portable Document Format (PDF), then a second version will also be posted in an accessible format utilizing ASCII or text HTML. All hyperlinks to PDF documents will include the word "PDF" within the hyperlink description.
4. Every graphic image shall have an "Alt" tag with a short description of that graphic image.
5. Photographs that contribute to the content of the page shall be linked by a "D." The "D" will be a selectable hyperlink to a description of the photograph.
6. All audio and video clips shall have text transcriptions or descriptions.
7. Any link text shall contain descriptive words which can be quickly reviewed by users. Words like "this", "here" or "click" alone do not convey information about the nature of the link.
8. An alternate mechanism for on-line forms will be provided since forms are not supported by all browsers. For example, the page could provide a phone number or e-mail address for obtaining the form or assistance.
9. If visitors are required to download software not accessible by a screen reader in order to obtain City documents, then an Alternate Document Format Notice will be posted at the site.
10. The use of frames and tables will be avoided since tables are not supported by all browsers and cannot be read intelligently by screen readers. For example, newspaper style layouts with text wrapping from one column to the next are not accessible.

A note about the use of tables in this site:
Tables are used in this site both to assist in layout and formatting and to represent tabular data. Tables used solely for formatting have been designed to "fail gracefully" without hindering legibility and understanding in browsers and text readers that do not support them. Tables used for presenting tabular data have been retained on this site for two reasons:

1. Tables convey the underlying structure of the information. The ability of text readers and most browsers to interpret tables is rapidly increasing through technology.
2. Presenting tables in other ways (such as with the HTML PRE element) makes it difficult to render a page intelligibly to text readers and other devices.

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