Census Bureau

Document Accessibility Statement

The Census Bureau is committed to making every document on its internet server accessible to all. Currently, we are reviewing our site and making modifications to those pages which are not in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Acts. We use Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) to create pages that are generally accessible to persons using screen reading devices, and we are careful in our construction of HTML documents to insure maximum accessibility. We will include alternate text describing graphics.

Many Census Bureau internet documents are in ASCII or HTML formats. These documents are accessible to persons using screen reading software. We also have a large number of documents in Adobe Acrobat PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Currently, many people using screen reading devices cannot read documents in PDF format.

Adobe Systems, Inc., is producing various products designed to make Adobe Acrobat documents accessible to persons using screen reading software. Their accessibility web pages describe their efforts. They also have a free downloadable accessibility plug-in, called Adobe Access, for use with the latest versions of the Adobe Acrobat Reader for Microsoft Windows 3.1, Windows 95, or Windows NT. This plug-in, which is still in a beta version, helps to overcome some of the problems of reading PDF documents with screen readers. While these tools are in development, we are committed to providing ASCII or HTML versions of these PDF files.

Comments on our accessibility policies are invited, and should be sent to: James.R.Clark@ccMail.Census.GOV.

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