Website Accessibility
The term accessibility refers to the ability of a website to be used by people with disabilities - this includes visually impaired visitors using screen readers, hearing impaired visitors using no sound, colour blind people, or those with other disabilities. A website with low accessibility is basically going to be impossible for those with disabilities to use.
We endeavour to ensure that our accessibility requirements and quality control procedures are met for all websites that we build and we validate all of the code.
- All of our sites are checked to make sure they comply with W3C guidelines. The W3C accessibility guidelines are used to assess a website's accessibility. The W3C is the Internet governing body and its web accessibility guidelines can be found on its website.
- We provide text alternatives (ALT text) for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language. Where the image is informational we ensure that the ALT text is as descriptive as possible. For images or graphics that serve a decorative purpose only the ALT text is given a null value as this allows the image to be ignored by the browsers that do not support images and avoids the browser detecting an image but being unable to find out what purpose it carries.
- We limit the use of Flash and any unnecessary movements on the screen e.g. scrolling, blinking, etc. and if any movements do appear they can be paused or stopped by the user.
- If video or audio content is provided then where applicable subtitles or written transcripts are also provided so that the content is accessible to hearing impaired users.
- Our design and programme specifications are set up to include no unnecessary barriers to access to this website by disabled people. We try to make the site as easy to use as possible by having a clear navigation and we use colour schemes and fonts that ensure the text is easy to read.
- We try to make the navigation and any forms on the site as accessible as possible. It should be possible to navigate with only the keyboard so that it is accessible to keyboard- and voice-only users.
- If the site consists of a large number of pages then we would recommend that a site map is included.
- It should be possible to resize the text on the screen if required.
- Where there are links on the site we try to distinguish these from the rest of the text and if possible we try to make the link text make sense out of context.
- We avoid the use of framesets in all the pages of websites that we build.
- We ensure that the websites are as cross-browser compatible as possible.