The site is designed to be viewable in all modern browsers, and to display in a legible manner in ancient browsers. The most problematic pages are the main index and the pages for veiled4allah, A Quranic Journal, and The Clipboard, which make use of multi-column layouts. These just don't display right in ancient browsers (especially Netscape 4.x and IE 5.0) so I've set up a hack that will display the page without any fancy styling. It's a bit unwieldy that way, but it should at least be legible, instead of having columns overlapping the content.
What are access keys? They are keyboard shortcuts that allow you to quickly jump to important pages on a website. If you ever feel lost in a sea of information and links, access keys can help you find your bearings again. How do you use access keys? If you are using Windows as your operating system, press and hold down the Alt key then press the access key (list given below). If you are using a Macintosh, press and hold down the Ctrl key and then press the access key. If you are using Internet Explorer as your browser (either Windows or Mac), the access key combination will take you to the location of a link to the desired page. You will have to press Enter to activate the link and go to that page. This is also true for people using Internet Explorer-based screen readers such as JAWS. On other browsers (e.g., Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc), the access key combination will take you directly to the desired page (email links will open a new email message in your email client, ready to type in). The following access keys are enabled at Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs:
If an access key doesn't work from a given page, go to the blog home page (access key 1) and you will find what you need there, inshallah. A link to this accessibility page, a link to the text-only version, a search link, or an email contact link may not be available on every page. Links to the home page always will be.
Note: All the access keys except access key 0 (which points to this page itself) are active on this page. Give them a try to see how they work!
The site Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs is set up to allow you you modify the size of the text via your browser. Look for the "View" menu and then for an item called "Text size" or "Text Zoom" or something similar. You can adjust the text size smaller or larger as you desire and will immediately see the changes on the page. This may be helpful for individuals with poor eyesight or other visual impairments.
If you are on a very slow connection or are using a handheld device with a very tiny screen, you may wish to load up my text-only version. This contains only the recent entries on my blog and nothing else. If you want to get to the important content quickly, you may prefer this version. As noted above, you can get to the text-only version with access key 3 from pages that have it available (if not, go to the blog home page with access key 1).
People with disabilities may need to use a text-only browser such as Lynx when they surf the internet, for various reasons. While you can view the text-only version of Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs in a text-only browser, I certainly do not want to limit visitors with disabilities to this version, since most of the content would be locked away from them. Instead, I have attempted to make the regular version of the site as easy to read and navigate as possible with text-only browsers. If you're not currently making use of a text-only browser and would like to get an idea of how Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs looks in one, you can try out the Lynx Viewer. You can follow the links on the Lynx Viewer page to see how other pages on the site look as well.
Many of the optimizations made for text-only browsers should also help make the site easier to use and navigate for screen readers such as JAWS, inshallah. However, there is probably much room for improvement here, since I don't have easy access to screen readers or screen reader simulations to test with.
In order to post a comment at Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs, you need to enter a security code from an image. Thus, visitors who are unable to access images are unable to post comments. The reason for this is to prevent against spamming of the comments. The other option would be to not have comments at all, which is inaccessible to everyone. Visitors who are unable to access comments are always welcome to with any comments they may have and I would be glad to post them if requested, inshallah.
One of the features I offer is a Hotlist, which allows visitors to create a personal page with a list of their favorite or most-referenced blog entries. This feature depends on the use of Javascript and is not accessible in browsers that don't have Javascript enabled; the "Add to hotlist" links simply won't work. This feature is not necessary to the functioning of the site, but is a nice add-on. I have not yet figured out a workaround.
A Quranic Journal, one of the blogs at this site, makes use of images to display Arabic text. It also features a "transliteration" (the Arabic written phonetically in English). The English meaning directly follows these. A Quranic Journal is intended to help Muslims and other interested parties who would like to learn about the Quran (the Islamic scripture). Hopefully, the English translation and the commentary will be accessible even to those who can't see the Arabic text or make sense of the transliteration, inshallah.
Aside: I sometimes make use of transliterated Arabic words or phrases that are common in Islamic discourse. The ones I use most commonly will generally feature a dotted underline and if you hover your mouse pointer over them you will see a little tool-tip with the meaning of the word or phrase. Other Arabic words and phrases will be translated and their meanings given in context. You can also check out my glossary of Islamic terms for more detailed information.
Some script-added links like hit counters and guestbooks may open in a new window. The nature of these links is controlled externally and not by me. All other links at Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs should open in the same window, inshallah.
Because the comments are submitted by visitors to this site and not by me, they may contain some irregular content that impedes accessibility, such as lack of "alt" tags on images or other problem HTML. I am looking into solutions for this problem that don't require editing several thousand comments in the database.
