Accessible design
Barcelona City Council aims to offer citizens an accessible design so that the maximum possible number of people can access the information available on the website, regardless of individual limitations or any limitation resulting from the context of use. Based on this principle, people with certain kinds of disability and elderly people have access to the information, as well as those who use different hardware devices or software technology.
To achieve this objective, the WCAG 1.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 1.0) standards and guidelines, established by the WAI (Web Accessibilitty Initiative) working group of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium), are followed. The aim is, wherever applicable, for all the Barcelona City Council web pages to comply with the priority 1and priority 2 checkpoints (giving a conformance level "Double A"), and to comply with certain standards set out in the priority 3 checkpoints.
Making access to web page contents easier
Text size
Accessible design allows the user to adjust the default font size on the screen, making it easier to read. There are different ways to do this, depending on the browser used. The following table shows how to change the font size from the menu of different browsers:
How to modify text size
| Browser |
Menu commands |
| Firefox |
View > Text size > Increase / Decrease |
| Internet Explorer |
View > Text size > Bigger |
| Internet Explorer Mobile |
View > Text size > Bigger |
| Konqueror |
View > Increase font size / Decrease font size |
| Opera |
View > Zoom > % |
| Safari |
View > Make text bigger |
Visual design
For accessibility the visual design of the default foreground and background colours must be taken into consideration, allowing a single column of black font on a white background (depending on the default configuration of the majority of browser displays). There are certain browsers which permit a selection of styles, adapting the presentation of information to the needs of the user. The following table shows how to change the default foreground and background from the menu of different browsers:
How to deactivate the design
| Browser |
Menu commands |
| Firefox |
View > Page style > No style / Basic style |
| Konqueror |
Application configuration needs to be modified |
| Opera |
View > Style > User mode |
- Please note:
- The browsers mentioned in the preceding tables are some of those most frequently used. The lists are not of browsers recommended by Barcelona City Council.
Technical configuration
Web pages
Together with accessibility standards, for the design, the web site has adopted the XHTML 1.0 standard for marking contents and cascading style sheets (CSS) and avoided using commercial technology which conditions the use of specific equipment or browsers. These standards guarantee access to information from all devices following the standards and recommendations of the W3C.
Content formats
In certain cases, for example XHTML pages, there are contents available in different formats. In these cases, as there is possibly a lack of a standard or open format (or possibly this does exist, but is not generalised) more common formats have been chosen, and there are free (plugins) available:
