What’s this about?
The Built Environment & Health (BEH) project is an interdisciplinary program of research at Columbia University. Led by epidemiologist Andrew Rundle, BEH uses spatial data to examine the implications of the built environment, including land use, public transit, and housing, for physical activity, diet, obesity, and other aspects of health. With a focus on New York City, BEH research will inform public policy to promote health in the city and metropolitan area. BEH is affiliated with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program at Columbia.
Accessibility Statement and Features
Built Environment and Health Project Website
The BEH project is committed to making our website equally accessible for all users, including those with disabilities. If you would like further information about our accessibility standards or have problems or suggestions with regard to the accessibility of this website, please contact us.
Who benefits from accessibility?
While the accessibility features of the BEH website certainly benefit visitors who may be blind, mobility-impaired, or using assistive technologies to navigate the Internet, they are also designed to make the experience of our site more pleasurable—and its use more intuitive—for a range of other users:
- Users with normal, failing vision
- Users with dyslexia
- Users unable to distinguish between certain colors
- Users who navigate with a keyboard or verbal input rather than with a mouse
- Users without a broadband connection to the Internet
- Users of text browsers (or older graphical browsers)
- Users of laptops and mobile, handheld devices
- Users with images, style sheets, and/or JavaScript deactivated in their browser’s preferences
Many of the measures we have taken to make the BEH website accessible and compatible with assistive technologies will not be apparent to the average visitor, but even for visitors who use the site in the conventional way, the consideration given to accessibility has serendipitous consequences. Our pages load quickly. They are more readily indexed by search engines. And our content is organized into easily scanned, bite-sized chunks. All of which makes it more likely you’ll find the particular information you’re looking for more quickly.
Access Keys
Many browsers allow users to navigate a website by typing special key-combinations. BEH has taken advantage of this feature and defined the following keys. If you are using Windows, press Alt + the number indicated. On a Macintosh, press Control + the number indicated.
- Access key 1 — Home
- Access key 2 — Jump to the main content
- Access key 5 — About BEH
- Access key 9 — Contact
- Access key 0 — Accessibility Features
Elasticity
Is our font size too small for your comfort? Contemporary browsers all have some means for rescaling text, and the BEH website is designed to take advantage of this feature. Depending on your browser, “text size” or “zooming” features are typically available in one of the browser's menus or on the application toolbar. Even our graphics will rescale in proportion with the text size you choose in your browser’s settings.
Really Simple Syndication
Subscribing to an RSS news feed is the easiest and most up-to-date way to keep on top of what’s going on at BEH. The news feed includes all of our announcements and articles so that you can stay abreast of our progress and findings.
Handheld Devices
BEH offers its website in a handheld format designed specifically for mobile phones and PDAs. If the browser on your handheld device supports standards, most likely the site will display in this format automatically. Nevertheless, we still recommend switching manually to the handheld format to take advantage of provisions we’ve made to further lower the bandwidth of our pages for handheld devices.
The handheld format of the BEH website is not abridged version of the site. It offers the very same content seen through a different filter, called a style sheet. If you choose to view the site in the handheld format, your preference will be saved in a cookie for the next time you visit the site (provided cookies are enabled in your browser).
You can switch back to the standard format at any time.
Links, Images, and Abbreviations
When the cursor is allowed to rest over certain links or images on the BEH website, a “tooltip” may appear. This brief text generally provides further information about the link or image, and while intended for use by certain assistive technologies, many common browsers will display the text, as well.
Similarly, acronyms and abbreviations in any text on the BEH site have a dotted underline the first time they appear on a page. Standards compliant browsers will display an explanation of the acronym or abbreviation as a “tooltip” provided the cursor is allowed to rest over the acronym or abbreviation.
JavaScript
JavaScript enables us to provide a few, small enhancements to the experience and usability of our site, but we respect that many of our visitors prefer not to use this technology. The BEH website is fully navigable with JavaScript disabled in your browser’s preferences, but the site may render differently in certain legacy browsers.
Compliance and Technical Details
The BEH website is designed to comply with the U.S. Federal Government 1998 Amendment to Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act, as well as to Conformance Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines recommended by the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative. In some measure these standards are subjective, but we have reviewed the guidelines and believe that the templates of our website are in compliance. Again, we welcome you to contact us with any comments or suggestions.
The site is standards-based and composed in semantic, valid XHTML 1.0 Strict with valid Cascading Style Sheets, which may be verified on any page. We welcome you to have a look at our colophon for further technical details about the design, markup, and information architecture of the site.
