Accessibility and ADA Compliance

ADA Compliance

In accordance with the Americans With Disabilities Act ( ADA ) and our own organization’ s Mission and Vision Statements, the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra has a commitment to making its services accessible to all segments of our community.

All rehearsal and performance facilities utilized by the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra have accessible parking, entrances, restrooms, ramps, seating and are fully ADA compliant. Also, accommodations for persons with disabilities such as assistive listening devices or large print programs may be arranged for all performances. If you wish to receive any of these services or accommodations for an upcoming concert, please call 612-656-5676.

Web Site Accessibility

The Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra is committed to ensuring that our web site is accessible to everyone. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the accessibility of this site, please contact us, as we are continually striving to improve the experience for all of our visitors.

Standards compliance

  1. All pages on this site follow U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.
  2. All pages on this site follow priorities 1 & 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
  3. All pages on this site should validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict.
  4. All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H1 is used to mark up the site header information, H2H4 tags are used for main content titles and sub-headings, H2H3 tags for main navigation titles and sub-headings. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+3. Opera users can skip sections by using "S" and "W" to cycle forwards and backwards respectively through headings.

Structural Markup

Web pages on MNPhil.org include 5 different areas:

  1. A header bar that includes selected basic navigation and internal page navigation,
  2. A top navigation bar with primary navigation links,
  3. A main content area,
  4. A left "side bar" containing contextual navigation and additional information,
  5. A footer, containing links to our contact information and to important documents for the site.

When CSS (Cascading Styles Sheet) are not applied to a document (or when using a screen reader), the 5 key areas are read in the above order.

Access Keys

This site does not use the accesskey attribute. Unfortunately, access keys often clash with keys set aside for use with other User Agents. (i.e. assistive technology). For this reason, we have decided to not set access keys.

Images

  1. Unless they are purely decorative items, all images used on this web site have suitable alt attributes.
  2. Content should be usable/accessible with images "off" (disabled).

Links

  1. Some links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target.
  2. Links are written to make sense out of context.
  3. The first link in every document is a “Skip to Content”; it is to skip directly to what is considered the main section of the page (the content).
  4. URLs are permanent whenever possible.

Forms

This website makes use of online forms. When they are implemented they use these accessibility methods:

  1. Form controls are appropriately and explicitly labeled.
  2. Form validation routine does not rely on client-side script.
  3. An alternate form of contact is always available: by phone, fax, or traditional mail.

Scripts

  1. Any client-side scripts used are non obtrusive.
  2. The content of this web site is usable without JavaScript support.

Visual design

  1. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
  2. This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
  3. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.
  4. Any information conveyed through the use of color is also available without color (i.e. text based).