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general information :

I have tried to design this site, my very first, to be accessible to everyone. I have tried to accommodate older browsers (running on older computers with older operating systems) and text-only browsers; and I hope I have made this site disability accessible. I have designed everything to look OK on small (13 inch), low resolution (640 x 480 pixels), 8-bit (256 colors) monitors, but it will look best on 24 bit ("millions") monitors. (Note : everything will look better on a Mac than on a Wintel PC. That is due to the intrinsically darker "gamma" of monitors running on a PC.) Everything except color images should look OK on greyscale or even on black & white monitors.

The main value in the site for most people lies in the educational content : original text articles on various aspects of dog care , dog training, dog rescue, and the Bouvier breed of dog. The cartoons and photos, while enjoyable, are not essential to the educational content, so if you are unable to view the images, don't feel that you are missing something essential.

I have tried to keep the pages small , so they will load fast even over a dial-up connection. (In rural areas, dial-up is sometimes the only available choice.) The various topic Index pages are the backbone of the site, so those pages or the Welcome page or What's New page are the ones to bookmark.

Don't forget that you can change the fonts, the text size , background color , link and visited link colors, and so on by altering your browser Preferences. So if you don't like my choices, DO feel free to change them; I have deliberately avoided using any coding that would override your choices, because I know some people need or want really large sized text or other visibility accomodations.

I will continue to add material to this site from time to time, especially throughout the year 2003. I still have a large backlog of material and am continuing to write new material as the need for it arises.(Update : as of 2013 I am still adding material but at a much slower pace)

disability access :

I've had a very basic level of access in this site from the start, thanks to my web design teacher , Lois Richter, who has been quite a "mover and shaker" in our local Mac and Internet User groups. Thanks to a book "Building AccessibleWebsites" by Joe Clark, I am currently (late 2013) going back to improve key pages.

blind or visually impaired, color blind

If you use a Mac, you probably already know that some Mac programs in OS 9 and later can read text to you. The browser iCab version 3.0.5 on OS 9 and OS 10.2 has Speak All and Stop Speaking commands with keyboard equivalents, so I'd suggest this as your browser. OS 10.2 (and higher) has "Services" commands for Speak and Stop Speaking text already selected that should work in many programs. Also Mac has ability to let you magnify the part of the screen that is under the mouse, and many browsers let you choose type size of text.

Unfortunately most screen reading software will mis-pronounce the word "Bouvier" which should be pronounced "boo vee ae" as in Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy (for those of you old enough to remember). The word is French but the dog is from Flanders, ie Netherlands and Belgium, but half of Belgium speaks French. While it IS possible to code a word or phrase as being in a language other than the one for the page as a whole, I really am NOT going to individually code every instance of "Bouvier" as the French pronounced "Bouvier"

I'm not as familiar with the Window side of life ("I don't do Windows" she said.) But I understand that there are some browsers that can read to you, including IBMHome Page Reader and pwWebSpeak (p w web speak)

I have tried to put Alt tags on all images, and now I am adding Title tags to images. A speaking browser should be able to read one or both of those. And the browser should speak the Table summary tags that tell what the table is supposed to accomplish.

A few pages have short video clips, which simply illustrate procedures described in the text on that page. Other pages have photographs, cartoons, or art work The photos and cartoons are somewhat succeptible to text description, but the art really is not.

For those with color vision issues, there is no place on this site where color discrimination is essential for navigation. and because I was taught to always keep high contrast between darkness and lightness of text and background, there should not be any problems reading the text. I checked all the early pages with monitor set to greyscale to check the contrast.

deaf or hearing impaired

About the only things on the site that appeal to hearing are the MIDI music files that I've added to enhance some of the song lyrics I have written that go to songs that are usually fairly well known. Or for a few videos I've added some music, and at some point I should probably make text note of that next to the video.

So basically you are not missing out on anything wonderful.

My own hearing has been going downhill for quite a few years, so I may wind up functionally deaf.

hand movement impaired

If you are on a Mac, you probably know that the Mac has had options to make keyboard commands easier for people with impaired hand use for a long long time. And you probably already know about alternative keyboards and trackballs or trackpads. And the Mac gives you the choice of giving many commands with your voice instead of with your hands.

not interested in dogs, don't like dogs

You have come to the WRONG site, "barking up the wrong tree", and there's nothing here of interest to you.