Accessibility

This website has been designed to be accessible to as many people as possible. We want everyone to be able to read the content on our site so if you have any problems please let us know and we will do our best to help.

Standards Compliance
There are standards specified by organisations such as the W3C and the US Government which define how websites should be written to enable everyone to use them. Sites which conform to these web standards can be read by all web browsers and even by people who are visually impaired through the use of screen reader software.

Our goal is that all pages comply with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and the US Government Section 508 Guidelines.

Access keys
Not everyone can easily use a mouse to navigate web pages. Instead when visiting standards compliant sites such as this one they can make use of a feature called access keys. All the main navigation links can also be accessed by holding down ALT and an access key on Windows (or CTRL and the access key on the Mac) and pressing ENTER.

The following access keys are used throughout the site:

Site Design
Website accessibility can also be improved through the use of stylesheets. The idea is that HTML is used only to write the content of the site and not to create the visual layout or look and feel. CSS stylesheets are then used to turn the plain HTML into the graphical website which you see in your browser. The advantage of this approach is that the HTML content can be displayed differently for different sizes of screen or different users. For example, if you have difficulty reading small text you could set your browser to use a high contrast stylesheet with a large font. If you were using a PDA or mobile phone you might disable the stylesheet and just view the site in plain HTML so that it fits on the smaller screen.

This site makes extensive use of CSS stylesheets to keep the design separate from the content and facilitate accessibility.