Visual design

This website will:

• use style sheet technology, such as cascading style sheets, for visual layout. This is an efficient way of working that helps us to organise and update websites in the easiest way.
• ensure that the use of tables for layout is kept to a bare minimum, as evidence strongly suggests that tables are less user friendly.
• use only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers, to help make sure the text is as easy as possible to read.
• ensure that if a user has a browser that does not support stylesheets, then the content of each page should still be readable.

Image use

This website will include textual alternatives for image content. These are known as alt tags. Using these ensures that people using screen readers who are often visually impaired are also made aware of the pages image content. All CSIP websites will ensure that all:

• content images used will include descriptive alt tags
• images used for purely decorative purposes will include null alt tags
• complex images used will include longdesc tags. Using these ensures that the significance of each aspect of the complex image is explained to people using screen readers.

Font use

This website will provide prominent instructions for users to increase the relative font size, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers, to help make sure the text is as easy as possible to read. The following sites provides excellent working examples:

• Patient Opinion has prominent buttons to click on which increase or decrease the font size
• VSO has clear instructions on how to increase or decrease the font size using different web browsers
• Thames valley police has clear instructions on how to increase or decrease the font size using different web browsers.