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Accessibility
This website has been designed to be accessible to as many people as possible. If you have difficulty using our site please let us know and we will do our best to rectify this in future maintenance and development.
Following the publication of PAS 78 Guide to good practice in commissioning accessible websites, developed in conjunction with the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) and our obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), this website is working towards full compliance with the consensus on accessibility best practice.
On the current version of the site we have attempted to comply specifically with: Priority 1 and Priority 2 guidelines of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG). The elements covered by the Priority 3 guidelines are not, in most cases used by our sites, however as the sites develops such functions we will aim for compliance at this level.
This site has been tested using the W3C Markup Validation Service.
Access Keys
We have chosen not to use access keys on our site because of their possible interference with other applications you may be using to aid your viewing of this website.
Navigation aids
- This site is built using structured semantic markup. H2 tags are used for main titles to aid users of screen reading software. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+2.
- This site has been coded to ensure a logical tab order through links and form elements. Keyboard navigation is possible via the TAB KEY on your keyboard. Alternatively Opera users can use the A KEY to navigate links and the TAB KEY to navigate form elements.
- A "Jump to page content" link has been provided to allow users of text-only browsers and screen readers to bypass the site navigation to quickly access its content. There is also a "Jump to main navigation" link proveded to allow users to go directly to the main navigation of the site to help reduce users getting lost.
Browser Preferences
Changing the preferences on your Web browser may help make this website easier to use. It is possible to change text size and colour as well as background colours by making changes in the preferences or options section of your browser. The exact details of how to do this will be different for each type of browser.
For information on how to make the text larger in your browser please visit My Web My Way. My Web My Way has been developed and maintained through a partnership between the BBC and AbilityNet, a leading UK computing and disability charity. It is based on AbilityNet's original My Computer, My Way site.
You may be interested in the User Preferences Toolbar for Internet Explorer users which has been design to provide a simple way for users to impose their accessibility preferences onto potentially any Web page.
Portable Document Format (PDF)
Some documents are provided as Adobe PDFs. We recognise that visually impaired users might have difficulty accessing these files. Visit Adobe's accessibility site for free tools that will convert PDFs to plain text or HTML, and for further information about PDFs and accessibility. We are currently working on producing more accessible formats.
Contact Us
If you have difficulty accessing the site or have any comments or feedback on how we can improve your online experience, please do not hesitate to contact us:
Telephone: 01225 755558
