This web-site, "haunting grounds dot org", is a historic record, reference, and point of contact for those interested in a private home halloween display called the Hallowed Haunting Grounds. The show is no longer being presented, so we are trying our best to present the appearance, ambiance and experience that one might have had when visiting on Halloween night.
The show always had good accessibilty for a personal home project, with full wheelchair access and many various visua, aural and physical elements. We are working to make the website even more accessible. It is our intention to bring the site into full conformance with W3C's "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0", available at http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WAI-WEBCONTENT-19990505, level Double-A. We are working on resolving a few issues with Priority 1 checkpoints 1.1, 1.3, and 1.4; Priority 2 checkpoints 3.5, 7.5, 12.4, 13.3. In the spirit of the guidelines, there is no essential material on the web site, and all significant material is available through standard hyperlinks to text, sounds and images. There should be no difficulties using text readers and interpreters for accessing the textual material.
Much of the site is devoted to photographs and descriptions of the various props and scenes. All of the images have short descriptions and most have captions and other associated text. As we continue to expand and edit the site, we intend to make those descriptions more comprehensive as to the actual appearance of the image.
Several pages also have sound clips available. Wave files are embedded in those pages and also have links to download the file or an alternative MP3 format. Generally the audio tracks represent what one would hear when viewing the scene. In most cases that includes some background music, sound effects, and character voices. Short passages may not have text equivalents. Long speeches all have links to complete text. We will try to provide additional descriptive text to the audio links.
Most pages on this site are based on a common template. Each page is divided into a two-column layout using css for positioning and styling. The left column contains the main titles and may include introductory subtitles, short notes, and links to the home page and pages associated with the current one. The right column contains the primary content section of the page. The lower portion of the page contains an e-mail address link, copyright and acknowledgment information, validation links, and other information. The page layout conveys no meaning and the page can be rendered and read linearly without the loss of any information.
When used with the included Cascading Style Sheet (CSS), the text in these web pages is rendered in orange on a black background. The color scheme passes a standard contrast validator. With the CSS disabled, the text renders in the user-agent (browser) default scheme. The entire site is built to be liquid with fully scalable fonts.
Every page has a standard background image, a dark grey silhouette of a cemetery on a grassy hillside, containing a mausoleum and grave markers of varying styles and set at varying angles, dominated by a tall, thin monument topped by a celtic cross.The cross is shown in silhouette before a large full moon. Overhanging the markers is a tree with barren branches and several stylized flying bats. That graphic image is rendered with a black background matching the CSS body background color to maintain legibility in the event the image is not available.
Every page has one or more images, sometimes identified as "Marker", that are used as an identifier for major hyperlinks to other parts of the website, or to other websites. Text adjacent to each marker will have an identical link. On the main page that text may be in an adjacent table cell. The "Marker" images are grave markers or statuary and may be placed at random. The markers are for page styling only; there is no writing or decoration on the markers.
We are happy to take comments or suggestions on our accessibility implementation, bearing in mind that this is a totally voluntary exercise.
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