Accessibility and standard compliance statement

xhtml valid

Our website complies with the latest standard for the web (xhtml 1.1 strict). Accessibility is an important idea behind many web standards, especially HTML.

Standards are written so that old browsers will still understand the basic structure of your documents. Even if they can’t understand the newest and coolest additions to the standards, they’ll be able to display the content of your site.

Not only does this mean allowing the web to be used by people with disabilities, but also allowing web pages to be understood by people using browsers other than the usual ones - including voice browsers that read web pages aloud to people with sight impairments, Braille browsers that translate text into Braille, hand-held browsers with very little monitor space, teletext displays, and other unusual output devices.

As the variety of web access methods increases, adjusting or duplicating websites to satisfy all needs will become increasingly difficult (indeed, some say it’s impossible even today). Following standards is a major step towards solving this problem. This help ensure not only that traditional browsers, old and new, will all be able to present our site properly, but also that it will work with unusual browsers and media.

properly structured pages

All our web site is free of the convoluted mess of nested tables, presentational markup and spacer GIFs. The content (the main and most important part of the page) is put on the top of the html page. It loads before the header and the presentation information is done only with the CSS.

This provides every web user a better experience because:

people that use other browsers than Internet Explorer and other operating systems than Windows are able to use the site
user agents that have disabled or do not support it will get unstyled but well-structured and fully usable content
user agents that do not support JavaScript will still be able to use the site
Our site is be faster thanks to reduced file sizes compared to table-tag soup
our site is usable in mobile and handheld devices
accessibly marked up forms enhance usability for everybody
You are in control of how our pages displays on your screen. We adjust to your screen and your font size, not the opposite.

Accessibility

Access options page

You can disable the stylesheets, change the font size or the website's colour scheme. You can use use access keys to navigate the site.

On Internet explorer, you can't easily disable the stylesheet. If you want to have maximal control on the display of the websites you visit, we suggest you to use firefox.

Access keys

Access keys are a useful navigation device enabling you to get around our site using your keyboard. They can be used to jump to different sections of content across our main site.

Available Access Keys

f – find (got to the search box)
h - homepage

and then you have a number between 0 and 9 for each of the main section of the website

0 - about us
1 - news
...
9 - noticeboard

Each browser handles differently the access keys, please find explaination for the most common ones

Firefox and Mozilla (PC)

Hold down the ALT key and press the number or letter of the access key

Internet Explorer 5+ (PC)

Hold down the ALT key, press the number or letter of the access key, release both keys then press ENTER

Mozilla (Mac)

Hold down the CTRL key and press the number or letter of the access key

Safari and Omniweb (Mac)

Hold down the CTRL key and press the number or letter of the access key

Minimising the use of images

Live text is used rather than graphics wherever possible to reduce page download time and to increase your control over text size.

Alternative text

Images on our website have alternative text attributes, often known as alt text. This means that when an image is used on a web page to convey information its content is also described in the alt text. This means that the image can be understood by text browsers and assistive technologies such as screen readers. If an image is used for simply decorative purposes, the text attribute for the image is left empty in line with accepted best practice.

Help us to help you

We seek to meet the Priority A and selected AA and AAA guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Our website is tested on a regular basis using a combination of automated tools to identify potential problem areas and manual testing to ensure we meet the spirit as well as the letter of the W3C's accessibility guidelines.

Inevitably, we won't always get it right, and with over the amount of pages we have published, we are bound to miss some problems, but we are committed to addressing any access issues promptly. And that's where we'd like your help. If you experience any difficulties in accessing our website, or have trouble using any aspect of the website, we'd like you to let us know. Contact us and let us know your experience.

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