Accessibility & web standards

This website has been designed to be as accessible as possible, irrespective of the browsing device you use. However, if you have trouble using the site, please let us know so that we can try to fix the problem.

Access for all

Making and accessible websites is an essential element of web design. We generally follow the relevant guidelines of the Web Accessibility Initiative's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 1.0.

However, accessibility is about judgement as much as conformance; we consider the accessibility implications of everything we design, whether they are covered by a guideline or not.

This means that we ensure every aspect of a websites design is presented in an accessible and understandable way to any user. The basic principals we adopt are in keeping the design clean and simple, making the layout legible, and ensuring that the content is appropriate and easily understood through clear navigation and signposting.

We believe a website visitor should always know where they are when on any page of a website:

• where they are
• where they came from
• where they can go

We normally advise against displaying a conformance badge boasting AA or AAA compliance; instead, we create a page detailing the site's accessibility policy, and requesting feedback about any problems experienced by users. However, we endeavour to ensure that the site qualifies as at least AA compliant.

Web standards

This website has been designed using web standards. It uses valid XHTML for content, CSS for presentation, and some unobtrusive JavaScript for behaviour.

As a result this website will support all modern web browsers: Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6+, Mozilla Firefox / Camino, Netscape version 7+, Safari, Opera version 7+.

Using web standards helps to future-proof websites against developments in browser technology.

Web standards are published by the World Wide Web Consortium.

For more on the value of web standards, see the Web Standards Project.