Keyboard shortcuts and WCAG compliance

To the extent that such a thing is possible, we have endeavoured to ensure the following (if you find cases where we haven't please let us know):

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

• S - Skip navigation

• 1 - Home page

• 8 - Terms and conditions

• 9 - Feedback ("Contact Us" page)

• 0 - Access key details (this page)

• P - Privacy policy

• T - Top of page

Standards compliance

All pages on this site are at least WCAG A approved, complying wih all priority 1, and most priority 2 and 3 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

All pages on this site validate as HTML 4.01 Strict.

All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for main subtitles, H4 tags for page section titles, H5 tags for subsections and H6 tags for date stamps. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within this accessibility statement ("references") by pressing ALT+INSERT+4 or to the next subheading ("navigation aids") by pressing ALT+INSERT+5.

Navigation aids

Javascript has been kept to a minimum and the site navigation is enirely functional without it.

Links

Links are written to make sense out of context.

All links open into the same window (no pop-ups).

Images

All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics (which have been kept to a minimum) include null ALT attributes.

Visual design

This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.

This site uses relative font sizes and is compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in most visual browsers.

All text is text rather than images of text.

If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility references

Accessibility guidelines & help

• W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.

• W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.

• W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer's guide to accessibility.

• U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

• Dive Into Accessibility [zip 168KB] - Download a copy of Mark Pilgrims free e-book. I highly recommend this book and it's completely free.

Accessibility software

• JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.

• Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available.

• Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.

• Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.

• 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

• Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.

• HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.

• Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.

• Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.