Accessibility

The State of California and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE), the Board of Forestry and Fire Protection (BOF) are committed to making our websites equally accessible for all visitors. Our websites are developed in compliance with California Government Code § 11135. GC § 11135 requires that all electronic and information technology developed or purchased by the State of California is accessible to people with disabilities. We develop and test our websites to meet Section 508 and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 standards.

Difficulty Accessing Material

If you have difficulty accessing any material on our websites, please contact us and we will correct the problem or provide the information in an alternative format. You can report web accessibility problems by sending an email to Webmaster@fire.ca.gov.

You can also contact the webmaster via mail or phone:
Forestry and Fire Protection
Webmaster
715 P Street 
Sacramento, CA 95814
916-654-5244

If you use a teletypewriter (TTY) device, contact the California Relay Service at 800-735-2929 and relay your question to the webmaster at 916-654-5244.

 

Usability Features

We design our websites to enable visitors to navigate through our pages using standard browser usability features and common assistive technologies. Our visitors can adjust values in the settings window at the top of each page to meet their particular viewing needs include:

  • Change font size
  • High Contrast mode

WCAG 2.1 Accessibility is organized under 4 principles:

Perceivable:

  • Provide text alternatives for non-text content.
  • Provide captions and other alternatives for multimedia.
  • Create content that can be presented in different ways, including by assistive technologies, without losing meaning.
  • Make it easier for users to see and hear content.

Operable:

  • Make all functionality available from a keyboard.
  • Give users enough time to read and use content.
  • Do not use content that causes seizures.
  • Help users navigate and find content.

Understandable:

  • Make text readable and understandable.
  • Make content appear and operate in a predictable manner.
  • Help users avoid and correct mistakes.

Robust:

  • Maximize compatibility with current and future user tools.

These additions increase the level of accessibility and empowerment to your audience to create fully accessible websites and documents for the enjoyment of all.

 

What Makes our Site Accessible

  • The Navigation
    • The main navigation, located just below the title banner (California logo and branding banner), uses lists. Lists make it easier for screen readers to literally read down the list without having to sort through unnecessary code. Lists also allow the users to use the tab key to move from link to link.
  • Images With Alternative Text
    • Photographs and other relevant images on the site are accompanied by alternative text (the ALT tag.) Alt tags provide a written description of the image, which is accessible to screen readers, and it is visible when the mouse is placed over the image. This is also useful for people who have images turned off on their browser, in which case a description will display where the image used to be.
  • Fluid Sizing Display
    • The width of our pages changes and adapts to the width of your browser. This is more noticeable if you have a large screen and/or use high resolution for your monitor. Our website is viewed best at a minimum of 800 x 600 pixels.
  • Accessible Via Mouse or Keyboard
  • Accessibility Settings
    • Users can adjust font size and utilize High Contrast mode from our site settings window at the top of each page
  • Regular testing to identify issues
    • We use a suite of accessibility scanners to run daily scans on all of our pages to identify and quickly remediate accessibility errors in our content.
    • All legacy documents hosted on our sites have been remediated to successfully pass accessibility testing, and all new content is required to be designed in a fully accessible manner.