About Our Index for People with Visual Impairments

We at the Unitarian Universalist Association take our committment to accessibility seriously - we work, study, and consult to be sure the content of our website is easily accessible to all persons.

Many sighted people wonder about the small size of the link to our "Index for People with Visual Impairments." "My sight is fine," they say, "and I can barely see that link! How could someone whose sight is impaired be expected to see it?"

Most folks with vision impairments have their browsers set to show fonts larger than most sighted people see them - and in that case, the index for people with visual impairments usually isn't necessary. Since all our pages use "relative" font sizes (meaning that the choice for display size lies with the user - we do not rigidly define font size), people with partial sight can often read the UUA pages without additional help.

People with little or no sight often have specialized browsers that don't show pages the way sighted people's do; they read them out loud using the computer's speaker system. And in that case, it doesn't matter how large the link is - it's the very first thing at the top of the page, and is therefore the first thing to be read on the UUA main page.

Since our main page relies on tables to give it an attractive visual format, an index for people with visual impairments is necessary. While sighted people can see that the content on the right side of the page is the most important (with news updates, daily features, and the like), people having the page read to them would have to listen to the entire menu on the left every time they came to the page. The index for the visually impaired lists those news features and other important updates at the top of the page, to be read first.

Almost none of the other UUA pages on uua.org rely so heavily on tables for formatting - or if they do, the content is still presented in an order that wouldn't be frustrating if being read aloud rather than seen. That's why we don't have duplicate pages all over the site.

Thanks for the concern so many of you have shown on this important topic. If you have further questions, or tips to pass along to our Office of Electronic Communication, please feel free to write to the UUA Webmaster: oec@uua.org.

Unitarian Universalist Association
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