Accessibility
What is Accessibility?
A website that is accessible means that it is designed to meet guidelines set by the Worldwide Web consortium (W3C). The disability discrimination act 1995 says that businesses should be accessible to disabled people, and this includes the website.
Accessibility on this site
This site has been designed to meet at least priority 1 of the W3C's guidelines to make it easier for people with disabilities to use it. The following features and methods have been used to make this possible.
Text Size
All text on the site is completely scalable which means that it can be adjusted to suit the users preferences. This can be done using the browser, or to make it easier there is a text size changer at the top of every page. Once you set the size you prefer with the text size changer at the top, the site's text will remain at the size you select until you select another size. If you re-visit this site, the text size will be the same as last time it was set.
Alternatively the text size can be changed from your browser generally by selecting the text size option from the view menu. On some browsers such as Mozilla and Safari, the text size can be changed by holding the CTRL or APPLE key, and pressing the plus (+) or minus (-) keys.
Please note that in older versions of Internet Explorer (6, 5.5, 5) the text size selection may not be remembered by the browser when using the text size changer. You can just go to the View menu in the browser and select text size. The latest version of Internet Exlorer can be downloaded for free from Microsoft.
Alternative style sheets
For those of you with browsers that support alternative style sheets, there is the option of selecting a medium text size and a large text size style sheet. This will have the same effect as using the text size changer at the top of every page of the website.
Coding Standards
The website is coded using XHTML 1.0 Strict and all pages have been validated to meet the W3C specifications. Being validated to these standards means that the website will be easier to use for those who use assistive software to use websites. It also means that the website will work properly in internet browsers, whereas the results can be unexpected if a website uses invalid code.
Javascript
The use of Javascript has been kept to a minimum in order that the site remains accessible. It is possible to use this site both with and without javascript enabled. The text size changer and the contact page uses a little Javascript so it would be of benefit to have Javascript enabled. If Javascript is disabled, then you can still change the text size and use the alternate style sheets from your browser.
