This site has been designed to follow current World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) web standards and guidelines for compliance and accessibility, where possible. The steps taken to do this are detailed on this page.

General Navigation Aids

This site has a Site Map Page with an Index of all Contents

All links have appropriate Title tags when the mouse is moved over them. All images that contain text have appropriate ALT tags that can be read by screen readers.

For backwards compatibility with older display screens, the site is designed to be viewable in screen resolutions (size) of 800 x 600 and higher, with minimal or no horizontal scrolling.

Properly Structured Code

This site uses properly formatted and structured code that adheres to current Web Standards. All pages are written in XHTML and use CSS for visual layout. Each page uses well-structured semantic markup, for example using header tags like <h1>, <h2>, and <p> paragraph tags to logically structure the content.

The archaic practices of using Tables and invisible spacing images (GIF’s) for page layout is avoided, as are deprecated tags such as FONT, overuse of line break <BR> tags, etc.

Therefore, if your browsing device doesn’t support stylesheets, or if you have them turned off, the content should still be accessible, readable and understandable. The site should also therefore be easy to use with screen readers such as JAWS and text based browsers such as LYNX.

Re-sizeable Text

The fonts / text used on this website are specified in relative units, rather than in absolute (pixel) sizes. Therefore, the text on this website can be re-sized and made larger for easier reading.

Many browsers, such as Internet Explorer (version 7) and Mozilla Firefox, support text sizeing using the CTRL (control) and + (plus) and - (minus) keys simultaneously. The size of text can also be changed by holding down the CTRL (control) key and scrolling the middle mouse wheel button, if available. To re-size text on your specific browser, please consult your browser help menu.

HTML and CSS Compliance & Interoperability

HTML and CSS compliance are checked against the W3C’s on-line automated validators, for interoperability across browsers and platforms. Pages have been checked for accessibility against the W3C’s Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at Level Double-A conformance.

Care has been taken to create interoperable Web pages, that validate in accordance with the W3C automated Markup Validation Service. You may use the icons on the left to check and verify this.

This page complies with all of the automatic checkpoints of the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 at Level Double-A Conformance (Priority 1 and Priority 2 checkpoints), as tested and verified by the Watchfire WebXACT service.

Standard browser support

Because of the techniques detailed above, this web site should be easy to view and navigate in any modern web browser that supports W3C standards; we recommend using Mozilla Firefox, Opera, or Internet Explorer (V7 or higher).

Suggestions and Feedback

Accessibility compliance depends on automated tests as well as a number of other considerations and checkpoints that rely on a subjective human interpretation (for example the use of colours and order of presentation).

Any suggestions, comments and feedback to improve accessibility are always appreciated. If you experience any difficulties accessing the information on this website, please contact us and we will evaluate your comments in accordance with our site design.

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