These World Wide Web pages provide internal and external communication. They contain information about ECEDHA, its organization, people, programs, policies, procedures, etc.
The site is made available without charge to all who seek its information. Except for some pages, forms, and dynamic resources used in maintaining the site, there are no pages with restricted access. Some pages may contain copyrighted material, which is used with permission and for which the normal copyright rules apply.
You are invited to browse these pages for the information you want. Your comments about them are welcome.
Some pages on other Web sites, linked from this site, may not be available to all visitors. ECEDHA is not responsible for the style, content, or availability of pages not on its server. When resources linked from the ECEDHA site are not universally available, that fact is noted near the link. Visitors who discover broken links or who have difficulty accessing resources linked from the ECEDHA site are encouraged to send a comment to that effect to ECEDHA.
This site is intended to supply the most information content, without fancy graphical design. The content changes relatively slowly. There are no distracting, attention-getting devices such as moving images, frames, sounds, unusual colors, large fonts, or advanced media. In other words, the site is not in the "Madison Avenue" style but rather in a style that some people will consider "boring." The pages are designed to be pleasing when rendered by the popular browsers on the popular platforms using default settings. In particular, these pages do not require the default width of browsers to be extended, and may be viewed satisfactorily on monitors with small screens.
Appearing on the bottom of each page are the URL of the page, the "Created" date it was first available, and the "Modified" date it was last posted on the Web server. In most cases, links to related pages (in addition to the site home page) are given, and often the author of the page, or the person responsible for its maintenance, is indicated.
The annual archives of this site are intended to be a permanent resource.
To make the pages accessible to those using text-only browsers, or those using text-to-speech systems, all images have alternate text forms. To help those accessing the site through a low-speed modem, pages are kept to a minimum size (seldom over 50k) and images are reused as much as possible. Pages with several images are also provided in text-only form.
The pages adhere to HTML version 3.2. They should be rendered properly by any of the popular modern browsers, all of which properly interpret all HTML 3.2 tags. Exceptions: some images are accompanied by fast-loading low-resolution images called by the LOWSRC attribute of the <IMG> tag, and most forms employ the formatting elements <P> or <TABLE> which, strictly speaking, are not allowed inside forms in HTML 3.2, but which all modern browsers interpret correctly. Also, font faces are called for and this, again, is not part of HTML 3.2 but all modern browsers know what to do. Most of the images use only the 216 colors that reproduce the same on all platforms. Most, but not all of the pages have been checked for adherence to HTML 3.2 using on-line syntax validation or the syntax checker in BBEdit. No pages require the browser to be capable of handling Java.
The NEEDHA home page is typically accessed 150 time per month, and all the other pages on this Web site together are accessed another 900 times. A running total of the number of accesses of each page in the Web site is kept. In addition, the following information is logged for each home-page access:
Also, the Web-site server keeps a log of requests which includes the client's IP address or domain name, time and date, URL of the resource requested, and the outcome of servicing the request.
Statistical summaries of usage are available for those who may be interested.
By policy this site does not send cookies to users, nor does it attempt to track the movement of readers within the site, other than to tally the total requests for each page. Its pages are all available to the public, and there is no mechanism for registering visitors. Exceptions to this policy are made only for maintenance of the Web site; programs that are used for updating, tracking usage, and other maintenance activities, and not intended for use by visitors, may be password protected, and may use cookies to implement security measures.
The site inquiry form requires a visitor's name and e-mail address. Also, various Web forms are used to communicate requests to the ECEDHA staff. These may require personal information such as name or e-mail address. This information, from fields that visitors explicitly fill out, is used only for the purpose of communication with the visitor, or fulfilling the request, and is not given to other organizations.
Except for the forms discussed in the previous paragraph, no personal information (names, e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, etc.) is gathered about visitors to this Web site. The log data (time, host, IP number, etc.) collected as described in the "Usage" section above is not distributed to the public. Aggregate results and statistics derived from this data may be made available from time to time to the general public. By policy, however, such statistics will not reveal the identity of individual remote hosts by either domain name or IP address, although they may identify higher-level domains or networks by name. Also by policy, such statistics will not disclose the URLs of referring pages, although they may identify higher-level domains associated with such URLs.
The Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P) is currently being developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). In terms of the draft of the vocabulary dated November 9, 1998, the privacy policies of this site can be expressed as follows:
This site is regularly visited by Web robots, and does not either encourage or discourage them. Information on the site is indexed by all the major search services.