STARS+Accessibility

Accessibility Rating - STudent Activities Reporting System

Chris Carmel

The Student Activities Reporting System, better known as STARS, is the organization in charge of student run organizations on campus including clubs, sorority and fraternities. It's associated website is located at stars.umd.edu and is the place to go for a directory of the campus' student organizations, an interface for a logged-in student's associations, and an online application for founding new official gathering.

Perceivable: Text Alternatives: This website is almost entirely based upon a text-format. The few images present are only for astethic reasons and their text alternative is of little concern, and the whole of the website's links are all text-format. COMPLETE Time-Based Media: The only time based media located on the website is a flash slideshow of various club stands at the First Look Fair, although there is no caption describing what it is should it fail to load. PARTIAL IMPLEMENTATION Adaptable: The website is formatted in a clean and accessible way, and with images disabled this is not lost. The images appear to hold only the space in which they were intended and its structure is upheld when the images aren't present. Since the whole of the website is textually based, the adaptability of the website holds true in various formats. COMPLETE Distinguishable: The website has no imagery or audio components essential to its funcitonality. It's background is largely black, save a banner strip of garnet for flair, and all text is black on a clearly contrasting white or yellow background. The text is all scalable and even at ludicrous sizes, the website holds its structure with ease. COMPLETE

As a whole, the website's perceivability is top notch. It's only marred by the lack of caption on its rather unnecessary flash slideshow, and in cases where this piece is lost for whatever reason the website does not lose any functionality whatsoever.

Operable: Keyboard Accessible: This website is completely accessible via keyboard. All the text is laid out in a top to bottom format and is completely searchable with any standard web browser's search function. All text fields and links are accessible by the tab button and there are no "keyboard traps" anywhere. COMPLETE Enough Time: Since nothing on the website is time based, this does not apply. COMPLETE Seizures: All componenets of the website are still and unanimated (except the flash slideshow, which has no flashing components) and therefore poses no threat of seizure. COMPLETE Nivagable: The website features a horizontal navigation bar across the top of each page under the banner. When navigating, the title bar of the browser and/or tabs displays the title of the page the user is currently located at. As well, each navigation link is a clear description of the page it links to. COMPLETE

The website is very easily navigable in all aspects. It features no special restrictions on its accessibility and is very clear in its layout.

Understandable: Readable: The website is not of any particular sophistication in its wording and the only particularly unusual words found are in the titles of the student organizations in its index. Each organization found in the index links to the organization's website where the user may be able to find more information in this regard. COMPLETE Predictable: The pages of the website are very predictable in their functionalitiy and feature no change of context unless the user purposefully navigates themself to a new location. Each page features the same navigation bar which link to their consistent destination and are all consistently indentified. COMPLETE Input assistance: The only available input to the visiting user is the keyword search input box on the search page in which the user can search for what they desire. The only input features are drop down menus with particular options to avoid such errors. COMPLETE

The website is very easy to understand and simple to use.

Robust: Compatible: Because virtually the whole of the website is textually basaed, the compatibility with various browsers and future technologies is very plausible. All the websites parsing and formatting is well done and becuase it does not feature any scripting (at least not obviously) there's no potential for breaking from this aspect. COMPLETE

This website does not seem to have any features that have troublesome compatibility, and thus passes its compatibilty test with flying colors!