An accessibility statement for this website

February 20th, 2007 by Rowan Purdy

I developed the accessibility statement for this website based on my work developing a usability and accessibility statement for the Care Services Improvement Partnership.

Standards compliance

This site will strive to be

• (External) Bobby AA approved. This is a free service which checks whether a chosen page meets all accessibility criteria.
• comply with the first three of the (External) W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines . These are:
  1. provide equivalent alternatives to auditory and visual content
  2. ensure that text and graphics are understandable when viewed without color
  3. use markup and style sheets and do so properly. This means <h1> tags are used for main titles, <h2> tags for subtitles (and so on), with presentation being handled through the appropriate usage of stylesheets.
• be validated to ensure they meet the requirements of XHTML 1.0 Strict.

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:

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

Assistance with files

This website provides files for download in various formats. To assist our users we will also provide links to appropriate file readers. This will ensure that our users can access all of the information on our websites.
Commonly used file types and links to the appropriate readers are listed below:

• Adobe PDF files (External) Adobe’s online PDF to HTML converter
• Microsoft Word files (External) Word Viewer 2003
• Microsoft PowerPoint files (External) PowerPoint Viewer 2003
• Microsoft Excel files (External) Excel Viewer 2003
• Microsoft Visio files (External) Visio Viewer 2002

Links to accessibility references, software and services

Accessibility references

• (External) W3 accessibility guidelines , which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
• (External) W3 accessibility techniques , which explains how to implement each guideline.
• (External) W3 accessibility checklist , a busy developer’s guide to accessibility.
• (External) U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines .

Accessibility software

• (External) JAWS , a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
• (External) Home Page Reader , a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available.
• (External) Lynx , a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
• (External) Links , a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
• (External) Opera , a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user stylesheets, image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.

Accessibility services