About the AHDS Website

This page is no longer updated, it represents the status on 31st March 2008

History | Network Services | Accessibility Statement | Technical Infrastructure

History

This site was published on 10 October 2003. It contains subsites for five Centres of the AHDS (archaeology, history, literature, languages and linguistics, performing arts and visual arts) along with the main part of the site, which deals with generic AHDS information.

Updates in the graphical templates were made on 10th March 2004.

Network Services

Details of how to employ Z39.50 and OAI-PMH to harvest AHDS collections records can be found on the Network Services page in the Collections area of the website.

Accessibility Statement

Standards Compliance

Each page on the AHDS website should conform to XHTML 1.0 Transitional. This can be tested via the W3C MarkUp Validation Service. The XHTML standard is used to ensure a consistent appearance over a range of web browsing environments (e.g. Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Opera).
Each page on the AHDS website should conform to Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) recommendations Level A. This is a judgement call but testing is provided by the Bobby Online Free Portal. The WAI recommendations are developed to ensure accessibility for a wide range of users, particular disabled and partially-sighted users

Navigation

Access keys, as highlighted on the Dive Into Accessibility website, are being developed. These should be in mid-2004.
A search website mechanism is provided. This still requires some work to improve its interface.

Visual Design

Cascading style sheets have been used for visual layout.
Browsers without good stylesheets support can still read this website
With one or two exceptions, relative font sizes are used throughout. Text size can be changed via the
```
View > Text Size
```
option on browsers such as Internet Explorer.

Testing

This website has been tested successfully against

Lynx emulator
Internet Explorer 5, 6
Mozilla 1.4
Opera 7
Safari

Fuller testing is still to be done on JAWS. There are some problems with layout in Netscape 4.7. Users with this browser may find the text version of the website provides an easier way of reading the website.

Please email the AHDS if you require further assistance with this website.

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Technical Infrastructure

The website publishing framework was designed to be very flexible and easily configurable. The framework is XML based and all configuration is done via XML formatted configuration files. The website's look and feel can be readily changed, as it is based on a series of underlying templates that control the layout of the various components of the page.

The website architecture was designed to enable content to be managed by the separate subject centres while still giving the website administrator control over the main look and feel of the site.

The publishing framework is based around the Apache Cocoon XML publishing system - an open source project from the Apache Software Group (http://cocoon.apache.org/). This base engine has been extended to achieve the desired functionality.

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