As with the National Science Foundation (NSF) web sites, The Antarctic Sun web site is used by an array of individuals and serves as an interface between the program and users, including researchers, program support personnel, media, academia, military branches, and people who want to learn more about Antarctica. Because of this interaction, the site complies with the special needs of people with disabilities, various age groups, and people for whom English is a second language.

In meeting these needs, the web site pages are developed using web standards based on criteria developed by the U.S. Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board (Access Board) that are detailed in the Technology Related Assistance for Individuals Act, Section 508, as well as rulings outlined in The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), protocols described in The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), and the Recommended Policies and Guidelines for Federal Public Websites (egov guidelines) published by the Interagency Committee on Government Information. Also taken into consideration are the NSF web development standards, the Research-Based Web Design and Usability Guidelines published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and best practices of web development.

Content on The Antarctic Sun web site is published in HTML, Portable Document Format (PDF), and ASCII formats.  To assist users with navigation, symbols are presented next to links that open documents or lead to other web sites (see the Help and Support page).

To provide feedback on accessibility issues, please contact our Web Support.  If you are experiencing any technical difficulties using this site, please see our Help and Support page.