The New York State Unified Court System acknowledges the importance of accessible sites. It is our goal to design
and code every new site, within our organization, that is easy to use by everyone, regardless of disability or lack of.
If you experience any trouble using this site or have any suggestions for improvements, e-mail
WebDesign@nycourts.gov.
Standards our organization strives to be compliant with:
Federal Section 508 Standard
NYS Information Technology Standard NYS-S08-005
Guideline we follow when designing, developing, and testing our pages:
Web Content Accessibility Guide 2.0
Clean, Simple and Consistent Layout
All pages are laid out in the same way, allowing you to go from page to page easily once familiar with the layout.
For more details, see About Our Layout.
Skip to Links
The skip to links for content, navigation, and accessibility are located at the top of each page, allowing you to jump
to page sections easily.
Relative Font Sizing
With the exception of a few images, all of the page element widths are em-based, allowing the page to size
appropriately by all browsers.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
The presentation of this site is accomplished through cascading style sheets. This includes colors, font-style, images,
and basic page layout. By using CSS for our styling, our pages are clear, streamlined, and downloads faster.
Liquid Layout
This page will expand horizontally to fit any window with a resolution of 800x600 or greater.
Condensed Menu
The skip to navigation link located at the top of the page will take you to the condensed menu. This menu contains
all of the links located on the page. Visually, this menu is located at the bottom of the page in the footer, and will
display in its entirety without any horizontal scrolling when resized up to four times the original size.
Common Access Keys (aka Hot Keys)
A - Accessibility
C - Contact Us
H - Home
N - Skip to Navigation
P - Skip to Page Content
Q - FAQs
R - Resources
U - UCS Home Page
Links
In an effort to make links apparent and to increase your trust in our site:
1. All links are navy blue and underlined.
2. All visited links will turn purple.
3. When mousing over these links, they will turn purple.
4. If a link opens a new window, you will be notified prior to clicking it.
5. All links have been labeled to make their purpose and action obvious.
Images and Alternative Text
Images that add content to the page contain an ALT attribute within the image tag. This provides a written description of the
image, which can be read by a screen reader, and is visible when the mouse is placed over the image. Images that do not meet
any content to the page have an empty ALT attribute, which helps those with assistive technologies to skip over them.
Tables
Tables are NOT used for layout, they are used solely to display tabular data. When displaying tabular data, we identify
row and column headers to help identify each data cell. We have also added styles to read the headers before each data
cell value within the header's column.
Keyboard and Mouse
All pages are marked up to allow one to use a mouse or tab through using a keyboard.
All pages are optimized for a 1024x768 resolution, but we support 800x600.
We cannot guarantee the same look for any resolution lower than 800x600.
Web Page Sections
Each page in our web applications is divided into five sections: Court System Branding,
Application Branding, Left Navigation Bar, Content, and Footer.
Court System Branding
This is the first section that appears on the page and should span the top horizontal section. Three items
are contained in this section: accessibility links, lady liberty logo, and a link to the
OCA Internet Home page.
Application Branding
The second section is visually below the Court System Branding section. This section will contain the name
of the application. Naming of the application can be different among each group. Sometimes the name of the
application's group will be listed, as well as the name of the application itself. If the application group
is listed, it will be a link to the application group's home page. The application name will link to the
application's home page.
User Message
This is an optional section. If displayed, it will be visually below the Application Branding section.
Applications may use this area to display system specific information to a user, once they are logged
into the system.
Left Navigation Bar
This section contains a navigation menu for the application. It will appear below the user message and
to the left most part of the page.
Content
The main contents of the page will be displayed in this section. Any of the following can be included in
this section: forms, reports, tabular data, headers, and paragraphs. Visually, this section is located to
the right of the Left Navigation Bar.
Footer
The footer provides contact information and a condensed menu. The condensed menu will contain all the links
that are available on each page. This section has been designed so that all of the links are viewable when
the page is resized up to four times its size.
Change the Font Size
1. Open your browser.
2. Click the menu icon (3 vertical dots) at the top of your browser window.
3. Click on Settings.
4. Click on Appearance.
5. Select your preferred size under the Font Size section.
Note: Our web pages display best when the font size is set to medium in
Chrome and Edge or 16 pt in Mozilla Firefox and Safari.
Zoom In & Zoom Out (not available in all browsers or versions)
The keyboard shortcut is: "Ctrl" + "+" to zoom in, and "Ctrl" + "-" to zoom out. Your browser may have a magnifying tool. If it does,
an a "+" tool is typically located in the bottom right corner of your browser window. Click on the a "+" to zoom in.
Change CSS
It is possible to override the CSS on the site by the use of you browser's developer tools. Refer to your browser's help menu for how to do this.
Supported Browsers
In order to access UCS web-based applications, you should use a supported
web browser. UCS currently tests to ensure full functionality on the
following browsers, versions, and platforms. While other systems may work for some applications,
UCS is unable to provide support for any issues which may arise on
non-supported systems.
If you are using a browser not listed below and encounter trouble accessing applications, please try one of the listed
browsers before reporting problems. Note that certain UCS applications may
have specific requirements which differ from what is listed below. These applications list their specific requirements
in their documentation, about, or "FAQ" sections.
Google Chrome 38+
Mozilla Firefox 31+
Apple Safari 7+
Microsoft Edge 20+
Mobile Web Browsers
At this time, the UCS supports only desktop computer based browsers. Many of our applications may work on mobile browsers for platforms
such as smart phones or tablets, but we currently cannot support issues which may arise while using these platforms.