Accessibility Statement & Information

This site has been designed to follow current World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recognised accessibility standards and guidelines, where possible.

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.

The site has been tested for use with screen readers such as JAWS and text based browsers such as LYNX.

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

Access Keys

On all pages the following Access Keys (or keyboard shortcuts) are available :-

Access key 1 - Goes to the Home page
Access key 2 - Skips over the navigation bar to the main Page content
Access key 3 - Goes to the Site Map page quick index to ALL contents
Access key 9 - Send Feedback - a link to the Contact Page and contact form

Note : to use Access Keys, on Windows you can press ALT + an access key then press the ENTER key; for example, ALT + 1 then ENTER for the Home Page. On a Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

Please note that Access keys are not supported on some older browsers (for instance Netscape 6 and earlier).

HTML and CSS Compliance & Interoperability

Care has been taken to create interoperable, standards compliant Web pages, that validate in accordance with the W3C automated Markup Validation Service.

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.

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 our website, please contact us and we will pass your comments on to our site designer.

Find out more about Accessibility...

You can find out more about Accessibility and Web Standards Compliance by using the following links (all open in a new browser window) :

Introduction to Web Accessibility from the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
The Web Standards Project website : fighting for standards to ensure web access for all
The Dive Into Accessibility website : 30 days to a more accessible web site
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines from the W3C