This website was developed in 2006 and was built to comply with internationally accepted web standards, including accessibility guidelines, in order to make it accessible to a business audience, regardless of personal disability or browsing software. All pages that link to this accessibility statement are required to conform to the standards set out on this page.
Standards Compliance
Valid XHTML and CSS: Our pages are written in valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and styled using valid CSS2 code.
Accessibility: We strive to achieve compliance with the WCAG 1.0 AA standard, and this is the standard we have applied to this website. Some of the guidelines require interpretation and we have used informed judgement to implement them with the needs of users foremost in mind. In some instances we have gone beyond the basic requirements where we have felt it necessary.
Standards and guidelines do not necessarily address all accessibility problems, so we particularly encourage anyone having difficulties using our site to contact us directly so we can fix any outstanding problems. Comments on any matter concerning the website, including the accessibility of our pages, can be sent to the Web Editor.
Navigation Aids
We have incorporated the following features into the site to help you find your way around:
Search box
- A search box allowing you to type in search terms and search the site is available on every page.
A-Z Site Index
- If you are having any trouble locating the information you are looking for, a full index of the site is available from the top right-hand menu on every page.
Breadcrumb trail
- We provide a breadcrumb trail feature above the main content of each page to show you the path from the home page to where you are in the site.
Links
- We try to ensure all our link text is written to make sense out of context.
- We have used title attributes where appropriate to give further information about the target of a link.
Access Keys
Due to the current lack of a consistent standard for the implementation of access keys, and the resulting unreliability in the way they work, we have decided at this stage not to include them on our pages. We do however feel that they are a useful idea in principle, so we will monitor developments on this issue and hope that in due course a standard will be agreed within the Web community, at which point we will be willing to adopt it. In the meantime we will be happy to hear any views you may have on this subject.
Visual design
Presentation
- We use stylesheets for visual layout combined with structured markup of headings, paragraphs and lists to separate content from presentation.
- The content of our pages is still readable if stylesheets are turned off or unavailable.
- We have used relative font sizes on our pages to ensure text is resizeable in visual browsers.
Images
- All content images have alt text providing equivalent text to describe their function.
- Purely decorative images have empty alt text, i.e. alt="", which means screen readers ignore the images completely.
Browser compatibility
We have tested our pages to ensure the information they contain is accessible in a range of different browsers as well as with screenreading software. By adhering to web standards we avoid the use of features specific to one browser. If you experience problems whilst using assistive software to access our site, please do let us know.
