Accessibility Information

The owners of this website care that our website is accessible to everyone, regardless of your ability or disability, your race, religion or gender.

This website was originally designed by Access by Design. They have worked in website accessibility since 2006 and have made every effort to ensure that our website is accessible as possible. However, if you find any problems with using the website, please accept our apologies and contact us so we can let them know.

This statement is to give you more information on what they have done to make your experience as accessible as possible. 

Using this website

• The main areas of each web page are defined by Landmarks
• There is a structured use of Headings
• Jump menus are provided to allow you to navigate directly to the main content of the page, the Site Map and this Accessibility Statement. These can be reached by using the Tab key after the page has loaded.
• The Site Map on this website contains links to all the pages on this website in a clean structured list, which may be easier to use.
• Access by Design have developed a set of accessibility tools that do not rely on 3rd party plugins or overlays, as these make websites less accessible.  We believe that the only way to truly make our websites accessible for all of our visitors, is to include such tools within our code. 
• If you wish to change the text sizes or the screen contrast, please use the options provided under our Accessibility Tools icon. You can reach these with a mouse or using the tab key on your keyboard.
  • ‘Standard text’ will provide a 12px equivalent version on most browsers
  • ‘Large text’ will provide a 16px equivalent version on most browsers
  • ‘Extra Large text’ will provide a 20px equivalent version on most browsers
  • There will be different colour contrast options, such as ‘Blue on Yellow", "Yellow on Blue", "White on Black" and "Black on Orange". These can be particularly helpful for neurodivergent people or those who perceive colours in different ways. All three text sizes may still be selected when any of these options are also chosen.
  • ‘Text Only’ will strip off all our styles and provide a plain text, linear version
  • The Text Only version can also be displayed in the 4 Colour Contrast Options. 
• To resize the text without using the toolbar:
  • In Google Chrome: Customise (3 dots top right) > Zoom > - or +
  • In Edge: Settings and More (3 dots top right) > Zoom > - or +
  • In Firefox: View > Text size > Increase or Decrease
  • In Safari: View > Zoom In or Zoom Out 
  • You can also scroll with the wheel of your mouse whilst holding down the control key (Windows) or Apple key (Mac).
• To use the keyboard instead of the mouse;
  • Use the Tab key to move and browse amongst the menus and links.
  • Pressing ‘Enter’ is the same as clicking a mouse
  • Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to move up or down the page or from left to right.
• There is also a specific Print Style. Should you wish to print off any of the web pages, you will see they will be formatted to ensure they stay one page wide.,
• All images contain an ALT tag unless decorative, where they are marked as empty.
• Links make sense out of context. Wherever possible, title tags have also been used to expand on their meaning.
• Drop-down menu bars to allow you to access child pages from the navigation menu. You will be able to clearly navigate through these by just using the Tab key and the Enter key to make a selection. Each page and child page will light up in turn, just as if a mouse had been used. This is called The Tab Test. If you prefer, please use the site map link for quick and easy browsing.
• Most of our site has ‘breadcrumbs’ on the top of each page which allow you to retrace your steps and go back to where you started. However, older sites may not have this facility so you may need to use the ‘Back’ button on your browser. Back buttons are usually on the top left hand corner of your browser. By simply clicking on this button you can retrace your steps through the pages you have already viewed on our website. Some keyboards also have a Back Button as part of their options.

General Accessibility

• This website conforms to the WCAG 2.2 four principles of accessibility and so is: perceivable, operable, understandable, and robust
• Access by Design considered the full range of techniques, including the advisory techniques, as well as to seeking relevant advice about current best practice to ensure that this web content is accessible, as far as possible, to all communities.
• This website has been thoroughly tested on multiple browsers, platforms and devices
• This website has been tested using multiple automated accessibility testing software

Web Standards

• All CSS and XHTML created by Access by Design validate to the document type.
• Validation does not equal accessibility.
• If a page on this website does not validate it is almost always because a third-party ‘plug-in’ has needed to be employed. Although try to use only accessible third-parties and we alert designers to accessibility issues, rectifying them is beyond our control.
• We reserve the right to use the web standards CSS and XHML buttons on this website as all elements within our control validate correctly.

Further Help

Your computer or smartphone may have an integrated feature that will read the content on the screen to you, out loud. These include ChromeVox on Chrome OS, VoiceOver on Mac and Narrator on Windows.

If you use Windows, the two most widely-used screen readers are:

NVDA, a free screen reader.

JAWS, a commercial screen reader that comes with a time-limited demonstration mode.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2

This website was compliant with WCAG 2.2 Priority A and AA Standards when it was launched. However, content updates may have introduced unintentional accessibility errors. These may be related to missing Alt Text, Link Text, Use of Language and Link Behaviour.

There may also be colour contrast issues with the standard view of this website, particularly if the branding is not accessible. Logos themselves are exempt from the WCAG Colour Contrast Guidelines, however the different colour contrast options available in the accessibility toolbar should resolve any contrast issues.

This website also complies with WCAG 2.2 AAA Standards, with the following exception relating to video content. All video content is hosted on YouTube and Vimeo.

• Sign language interpretation is provided for all prerecorded audio content in synchronized media.
  (Fails under WCAG 2.1 AAA 1.2.6 )

Both video platforms provide automated captioning and transcripts may be downloaded. We look forward to the day that they can also provide signing facilities.

• This site does not use meta access keys (sometimes called ‘hot keys’). Our research suggests that these are actually detrimental to most keyboard users as they already have their own keys set up which are then overwritten or confused by websites (that do not use a consistent approach). We will review this decision periodically and if research proves otherwise (or technology improves) we will resume these techniques.
• This site may fail validation on third-party technologies. This is because we have little or no ability to recode these to meet our high accessibility standards. However, we always aim to use plug-ins that are either accessible, increase the accessibility or have simple accessible alternatives. If forced to choose between accessibility features and validation, we have taken the difficult decision to always choose accessibility.

This accessibility statement was originally produced on 5 July 2024.

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