Accessibility
"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."
Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director and inventor of the World Wide Web.
Introduction
In designing this site we have made every effort to ensure it is accessible to all. We have followed the Web Accessibility Initiatives,
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and tested all pages using the HTML 4.0 and CSS validators available from the
w3 organisation website. We would greatly appreciate your feedback about accessibility issues as we are continually trying to improve the accessibility of this site. If you have any suggestions about how we can make this site more accessible or if you would like to report any accessibility problems you experience please email our
web co-ordinator.
For more details on acessibility also see the
Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) web site.
PDF Documents
This site contains many Portable Document Format (PDF) documents. PDF documents have been used for reports to ensure:
- documents are consistently formatted
- documents can be opened by everyone providing they have downloaded the free Adobe Acrobat Reader
- documents are as small as possible and therefore quicker to download
- documents can be easily saved
- documents can be easily printed
To view PDF documents you will need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader free from the Adobe website. An accessible version of Acrobat Reader which contains support for screen readers is available free from Adobe:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Navigation
This site uses flyout menus for navigation arranged in three levels. The first level contains eight menus which the main area groups of the web site. The menu is navigable using the mouse. On hovering over the headings it is possible to view the next flyout layer. If a flyout menu does not appear by clicking on the heading it is possible to go the the appropriate web page. A text-only version will be soon released, which will be navigable by using the keyboard only.
Resources for building accessible websites
- Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) - World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Initiative that, in coordination with organizations around the world, pursues accessibility of the Web through five primary areas of work: technology, guidelines, tools, education and outreach, and research and development.
- RNIB - Web Access Centre