We want our web site to be as accessible as possible and strive to conform at a minimum to Level Double-A compliance as specified by the Web Accessibility Initiative. This also involves implementing several selected Priority 3 checkpoints required to make the site Level Triple-A standard.
The guidelines defined by the WAI also form the basis of the standard required by the Royal National Institute for the Blind and their "See it right" campaign.
We aim to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 with respect to the provision of services online, as required by the Disability Rights Commission. This Act states unambiguously that private and public sector web sites must be accessible.
This web site has also been developed to meet the requirements of the Quality Framework for UK Government Website Design as published by The Office of the e-Envoy.
Please contact us if you wish to give us feedback so we can continue to improve the accessibility of this web site.
Accessibility features
- Links are written to make sense when read out of context.
- All images used in this site have appropriate text equivalents.
- Cascading style sheets have been used for layout and presentation.
- Each page is constructed so that it can be read without style sheets.
- This site uses relative font sizes to enable the user to specify "text size" in visual browsers.
- All forms follow a logical Tab sequence.
- Labels are associated with fields in HTML forms.
- A site map has been included to provide information about the general layout of the site.
- Keyboard shortcuts have been provided to assist navigation (see below).
Keyboard shortcuts
To give better accessibility to users without a mouse, we have integrated keyboard shortcuts into our web site. These shortcuts include:
S – Skip Navigation
1 – Home Page
2 – News
3 – Site Map
4 – Search
5 – Frequently Asked Questions
8 – Privacy Policy
9 – Contact Us
0 – Accessibility Information
To use these access keys, please follow the instructions below:
Windows PC's: press 'Alt' + 'Shortcut' ( + 'Return' for Explorer).
Apple Mac's: press 'Control' + 'Shortcut'.
Unfortunately the current version of Opera does not support this feature.
Accessibility references
Web browsers
Assistive technology
- JAWS: screen reader
- Lynx: text web browser