Accessibility

Man on laptop

We're committed to making our website as accessible as possible to all audiences (including those with visual, hearing, cognitive or motor impairments) to meet its requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act.

What is accessibility?

In this instance, accessibility refers to the attempt to ensure that our sites content can be read by everyone, regardless of disability and technology used.

We understand that accessibility should not be seen as an "optional extra", but must be considered as a fundamental consideration at every stage of site development work, and we try to ensure that our media works consistently with its assistive technologies to ensure an accessible experience for disabled users.

Often people are at a disadvantage when browsing a web site because they have not been accounted for in the design of the site. We have tried to provide a high level of accessibility and developments in this regard are ongoing.

Currently, we ensure compliance with World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. We are also striving to meet level 2 compliance, where possible, under these guidelines.

Below are examples of ways the site is made more accessible to people:

  • Pictures have descriptive text (alt attributes) in addition to text.
  • Built where possible in Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), to set the colour, size and layout of the text within each page.
  • Link text contains information about their destination and there is suitable space around links.
  • The simplest, clearest and most compact language appropriate for the site’s content is used.
  • Navigation is consistent and different sections of the page are clearly defined.
  • To ensure better understanding for those whose concentration of long pieces of information may not last (for instance, individuals with learning disabilities), information has been reduced, where possible, and relevant information has been grouped and displayed in different pages.
  • Font is appropriate, easy to read and meets contrast guidelines ensuring increased contrast between background and text for readability purposes.
  • Tables and pop-ups are avoided where possible and we are working to come up with alternative solutions where they are currently used.
  • Flickering screens/images are avoided.
  • Flash is avoided for navigation or in a manner that may hamper visitors using key areas of the site. When flash is required it is clearly labelled.

 

This is a representative sample of guidelines that we aim to adhere to. Please contact us if you have any accessibility concerns.