Accessibility

According to the Web Accessibility Initiative:

Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web. More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web.

In practical terms, this site has been built to be as flexible as possible as it is impossible to predict how a user will choose to access the site. This affords all users choice in how they prefer to use the site.

A summary of the steps we have taken to make this site accessible is provided below for your information.

Accessibility statement

  • Pages on this site use structured semantic markup. This means it is designed to make sense without any visual styles applied (e.g. colours, fonts etc.)
  • Text size can be changed to suit user preferences. Using Microsoft Internet Explorer this can be done via the View | Text size menu.
  • The site is designed to display consistently using a window size of 800 x 600, irrespective of text size. Most pages will display cogently at much narrower window sizes although some of the visual layout may degrade.
  • Pages on this site were designed to conform to Bobby AAA requirements for web accessibility. The extent to which this is achieved involves an element of subjective assessment.
  • Pages on this site were designed to conform to WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) A requirements for web accessibility produced by the W3C. The extent to which this is achieved involves an element of subjective assessment.
  • Pages on this site are Section 508 approved, complying with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines. The extent to which this is achieved involves an element of subjective assessment.

PDFs

  • Some information is provided on this site using PDF documents.
  • PDF documents can be viewed using Adobe Acrobat Reader, you may wish to download the current version.

Images

  • All content images use ALT attributes to add descriptive information.
  • Images used for styling purposes use empty ALT attributes.

Design

  • The visual design of the site is achieved using CSS (Cascading Stylesheets).
  • If your browser does not support this technology, the information will still be readable although the visual experience will be limited.