Accessibility Statement
No Text Only Version
We have taken a positive decision to not provide a text only version of this website. The Worldwide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guideline 11.4 strongly discourages the use of a text only alternative version, except as a last resort. A website designed to Worldwide Web Consortium standards (see below) is automatically available to as wide an audience as possible. Furthermore, many users suspect text only alternatives to be poorly maintained and out of date, seeing them as a "second class" version of the site. We prefer the inclusive approach of one version of the site, accessible to all.
Access Keys
Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on a web site. On Windows, you can press ALT and an access key followed by Enter; on Macintosh, you can press Control and an access key. An access key is a number key on your keyboard.
In order not to clash with key combinations used by both browsers and screen reading software, for which there is currently no universal standard, pages on this site define the following minimal set of access keys from the UK Government standard:
- Access key 0 - Accessibility statement (this page)
- Access key 1 - Home page
- Access key 9 - Feedback
Navigation Aids
Pages on this site do not have an explicit tab order defined, but follow the layout of the page. Pressing the tab key will cycle through the following items: utilities, page banner, search form, page content, main navigation, footer.
Skip links are provided to skip to the main content and to skip to the navigation menu. These links are hidden in the graphical versions using CSS styling.
Links
Links to other websites and PDF files open in the same browser window rather than opening a new window. Visitors wishing to open a new window can hold the SHIFT key (Windows) or Control key (Macintosh) while clicking on the link.
Images
All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics are implemented as background graphics in the cascading style sheet.
Visual Design
- This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
- This site uses only relative font sizes. Visitors may use the text size or page zoom facility of their browser to change the size of the text.
- If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable and is presented in the most sensible order.
Standards Compliance
- All pages on this site are WCAG AA approved, complying wih all priority 1 and 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. We are working towards achieving AAA compliance.
- All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict.
- All pages on this site validate as CSS version 2.
- All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for page titles, H2 tags for section titles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+2.
