Accessibility Statement

We recognise the importance of providing a website that is accessible by all users. As such we have made every effort to ensure that our site can be easily used by people with disabilities.

Accessibility

To ensure we are as accessible as possible we have made significant changes to achieve a Conformance Level "A" of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Most pages adhere to Conformance Level "A" but the majority of pages achieve a Conformance Level "Double-A".

Accessibility features

We have introduced the following features to ensure the best use of our site by all of our users.

Headings and navigation menus

HTML heading tags are used to convey document structure. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles etc. Navigation menus are marked up as HTML lists. This ensures that the number of links in the list is read out at the start and it can be skipped easily.

Images

All images used in this site include descriptive alt tag attributes. Where an image has no use other than being decorative the alt tag is set to null to allow easy reading of the site by all users.

Colours

We have taken care to ensure that the site's font and background colour combinations contrast significantly and are effective in ensuring information is still clear when viewed in different colour combinations. If you wish to override the site's colours, you can do this by changing your browser settings to your own preference.

Font size

Most of the font sizes we use on our site are sizable. You can change the font size to make it either larger or smaller via your browser settings. You can change the font size in the following ways depending on your browser;

• In Internet Explorer; select View, then Text Size, and then your preferred size.
• In Netscape; select View, then Text Zoom, and then your preferred percentage size.

Style-sheets

This site uses cascading style sheets for all visual layouts. If your browser or browsing device does not support style-sheets at all, the use of structured semantic mark up ensures that the content of each page is still readable and clearly structured. You can apply your own style-sheet onto this website by:

Internet Explorer;

• select Tools, then Internet Options, then Accessibility,
• next click on any or all 3 checkboxes to ignore colours, font styles or font sizes,
• in the same window you can change your style sheet by clicking the checkbox that says, 'format document using my style sheet' then browse to your style sheet and click OK.

In Netscape;

• select Edit, then Preferences and then Appearance,
• you will be given the choice to specify your own colours and fonts.

Forms and fields

All forms fields follow a logical tab sequence to ensure easy navigation. Most form fields also have ‘label’ and ‘id’ attributes to explicitly associate the form field with its label to allow for easy entry of data.

JavaScript

The use of Java script has been kept to an absolute minimum. Where it is used then all pages and process are still accessible should Javascript be turned off.

Links

All links have been written to make sense when taken out of context. Where appropriate, we have also added link title attributes to describe the link in greater detail.

Useful links:

If you would like to know more about accessibility guidelines, you may be interested in the following website:

http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT