Accessibility Statement

We are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability.

We are actively working to increase the accessibility and usability of our website and in doing so adhere to many of the available standards and guidelines.

If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the accessibility of this site, we invite you to contact us.

Standards compliance

All pages on this site follow priorities 1 & 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+2. Opera users can skip sections by using "S" and "W" to cycle forwards and backwards respectively through headings.

Structural Markup Web pages on this website include 4 different areas:

A header bar that includes the main navigation
A sidebar that contains secondary navigation and information
A main content area
A footer

When CSS (Cascading Styles Sheet) are not applied to a document (or when using a screen reader), the 4 areas are read in the above order.

Images

All images used on this web site have suitable alt and title attributes.

Content should be usable/accessible with images "off" (disabled).

All image-based links and content on this website use an image replacement technique that makes them accessible to non-visual browsers.

Links

All links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target, and links are written to make sense out of context.

The second link in every document is a "Skip To Main Content" link, which allows users to skip directly to the main content of the page.

URLs are permanent whenever possible.

All links that lead to external websites are clearly labelled in their title attributes.

Forms

All form controls are appropriately and explicitly labelled.

We provide an email address as an alternative form of access for our online forms.

Visual Design

This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.

This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.

If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Any information conveyed through the use of colour is also available without colour (i.e. text based).

Validation

All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict, and should be entirely compatible with all major current and future browsers.

Exceptions

Whilst we strive to adhere to the accepted guidelines and standards for accessibility and usability, it is not always possible to do so in all areas of the website.

Access Keys

Checkpoint 9.5 of WCAG 1.0 advises the use of 'Access keys' to allow for page navigation. This website does not use Access Keys, as research has shown that they increasingly conflict with functionality of modern browsers and assistive technology. This guideline is due to be removed with the release of WCAG 2.0.

Pre-filled form fields

Checkpoint 10.4 of WCAG 1.0 advises that text fields in forms should be pre-filled with default text. Research shows that this guideline is outdated and unnecessary. This guideline is due to be removed with the release of WCAG 2.0.

Contact Details

Should you have any questions about our Accessibility Statement, or any other aspect of our website, we invite you to contact us.