Website Accessibility

We are committed to making our website accessible to all users. Where possible we strive to comply with the highest standards of accessibility possible in accordance with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). Please contact us if you wish to give us feedback so we can continue to improve the accessibility of this website.

Access keys

To give better accessibility to users without a mouse, we have integrated keyboard shortcuts into our website where possible. These shortcuts include the following access keys which are those adopted as U.K. Government Standards:

• S - Skip navigation
• 1 - Home page
• 2 - What's new
• 3 - Site map
• 4 - Search
• 5 - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
• 6 - Help
• 7 - Complaints procedure
• 8 - Terms and Conditions
• 9 - Feedback form
• 0 - Access key details

• A - About
• C - Contact Us
• V - Services

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing access keys defined on the website. Windows users, you can press ALT + an access key. Mozilla Firefox users, you can press Alt + Shift + an access key. Macintosh users, you can press Control + an access key.

Links

• Where necessary, links have a title attribute which describes the target in greater detail.
• Links are written to make sense when read out of context.

Visual design

• This site uses cascading style sheets (CSS) for visual layout.
• If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets or stylesheets are switched off, the content of each page is still readable and the site fully navigable.
• This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
• A site map has been included to provide information about the general layout of the site.
• All images used in this site have appropriate text equivalents.
• All forms follow a logical Tab sequence.
• Labels are associated with fields in HTML forms.

Standards compliance

• All pages on this site comply with Priority Level 1 / Priority Level 2 of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This is a judgement call; many of the guidelines are intentionally vague. They require a subjective assessment and cannot be tested using any of the third party automatic validators. We have reviewed the guidelines and believe that all pages comply.
• All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
• All cascading style sheets (CSS) validate using the W3C CSS Validator.

Further Accessibility Information

• W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
  www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/
• W3C accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
  www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS
• W3C accessibility checklist, a developer's guide to accessibility.
  www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html