As with the National Science Foundation (NSF) web sites, the USAP portal 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 portal 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 portal web 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 USAP web portal 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 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 page.

The USAP portal complies with sections 501 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended.  If you have questions regarding sections 501 and 504 compliances, please contact Consuelo Roberts, NSF Office of Equal Opportunity Programs, at 703.292.7325 or croberts@nsf.gov.