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Accessibility

We are committed to making our website as accessible as possible with a view to achieving W3C AA compliance. This is an ongoing process and we are continually reviewing the site and making improvements to its accessibility.

Standards compliance

  • All pages on this site follow the priority 1 & 2 guidelines for the W3C Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
  • All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
  • All pages on this site use structured semantic markup.

Structural Markup

When CSS (Cascading Styles Sheet) are not applied to a document (or when using a screen reader), the website reads in the following order.

  • A header bar that includes the main navigation,
  • A main content area,
  • A footer.

Page Elements

Images

  • Unless they are purely decorative items, all images used on this web site have suitable alt attributes that describe the image.
  • Content is intended be usable/accessible with images "off" (i.e with images disabled).

Links

  • Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link fully describes the target.
  • Links are written to make sense out of context.
  • Menu links are assumed to be sufficiently clear and not require title text.
  • The first link in every document is a Skip Navigation link; it allows the user to skip directly to what is considered the main section of the page (the content). We have implemented this feature in a way that it allows Internet Explorer users to tab through (past that target link).
  • URLs are permanent whenever possible.

Scripts

  • Content of this web site is usable without JavaScript support.
Pop up Windows
  • This site does not use pop-up windows.
  • Where a link opens a new window, this behavior is indicated by "(opens in new window)".
  • Where a link opens a PDF or other document type, it will be noted that the page will open if possible.

Visual design

  • This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
  • This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
  • If your browser or browsing device does not support style sheets, the content of each page is still readable.
  • Any information conveyed through the use of color is also available without color (i.e. text based).
  • This site has been optimized for the most popular browsers:
  • Internet Explorer Version 6.0 and above
  • Firefox Version 2.0