Accessibility Statement

Our developers actively work to increase the accessibility and usability of our website and in doing so adhere to many of the available standards and guidelines.

This website endeavours to conform to W3C WCAG 2.1 AA standard.

These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities. Conformance with these guidelines will help make the web more user friendly for all people.

Our site has been built using code compliant with W3C standards for HTML and CSS. The site displays correctly in current browsers and using standards compliant HTML/CSS code means any future browsers will also display it correctly.

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.

We are continually seeking out solutions that will bring all areas of the site up to the same level of overall web accessibility. In the meantime should you experience any difficulty in accessing our website, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Standards Compliance

All pages on this site are standards compliant HTML 5.
All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. For example, h1 and h2 tags are used to convey document format. h1 tags are used for main titles, h2 tags for subtitles etc.

Validation

All pages on this site use valid markup, validated using the HTML validation service provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

All pages on this site are presented using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and have been validated using the CSS validation service provided by the W3C.

Navigation

Primary site navigation is located (default view) near the top of each page, sub navigation is on the left.

Navigation aids:

All pages have rel=home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers.
A link to the home page is available on each page.
Navigation menus are marked up as HTML lists and styled with CSS.

JavaScript

To enhance user experience this site utilises a small amount of JavaScript. If JavaScript is disabled or your browsing software does not support JavaScript the site is still fully functional.

Links

Many links have title attributes, which describe the link in greater detail, (unless the text of the link already fully describes the target).

Links are written to make sense out of context.

Skip Links

For users of text only browsers the skip content link is made visible at the top each page.
Images to do

All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes.

Visual design

This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Colour Combinations

Foreground and background colours have been used that provide a good level of contrast and therefore easy to read. Throughout the site, colour is never used as the only way to convey information.

Screen Readers

This site’s contents have been optimised for the use of screen reading software.

Screen readers are defined as ‘a software application that attempts to identify and interpret what is being displayed on the screen (or, more accurately, sent to standard output, whether a video monitor is present or not). This interpretation is then re-presented to the user with text-to-speech, sound icons, or a Braille output device. Screen readers are a form of assistive technology (AT) potentially useful to people who are blind, visually impaired, illiterate or learning disabled, often in combination with other AT, such as screen magnifiers.’ (Source: Wikipedia)

There are many screen readers to choose from, depending on your reasons to use the software and the technology installed on your computer (operating system, browser). Wikipedia offers a comparative list, which may provide some guidance in selecting a screen reader.