Steven Neill
Accessibility...
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.
We have ensured the site has been built to achieve a Conformance Level "AAA" of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. All pages adhere to Conformance Level "AAA".
Accessibility features
We have introduced the following features to ensure the best use of our site by all of our users.
Navigation
A hidden menu has been placed at the beginning of each page to allow screen reader users to link to the main areas of the page.
A hidden link has also been provided at the beginning of each page to provide easy access to information on accessibility.
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. No images have been used for decorative purposes, for example, blank images.
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.
Stylesheets
This site uses cascading style sheets for all visual layout. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets 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 stylesheet onto this website by:
- 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.
Tables
All data tables have properly scoped header cells, to allow screen readers to render them intelligently. We have also ensured table summaries are used as well as captions where appropriate.
No tables are used for layout.
Forms and fields
All forms fields follow a logical tab sequence to ensure easy navigation.
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.
Copy
Abbreviation and acronym tags have been used where appropriate to ensure abbreviations and acronyms are given a full textual explanation.
We have also ensured that blockquotes are only ever used for identifying quotations. They are not used for formatting purposes.