There are over 10 million disabled people in the UK. Everyday many of them face difficulties in accessing information and services because organisations have not made the reasonable adjustments required by law under the Disability Discrimination Act.

The problems faced by disabled people are also evident online with many websites failing to address the rights of disabled users to have the same access to information and services online as other users.

The highest standard of accessibility

We have worked hard to make build a website that whilst visually attractive, meets the highest standards of accessibility as defined in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) by the World Wide Web Consortium.

Our website is managed by a content management system (CMS) and passes the majority of checkpoints as set out in the WCAG version 1.0.

Assistive technologies

Our website has been designed to industry standards, uses cascading stylesheets (CSS) 2.0 and validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. This means that all our users, including those using assistive technologies should find the website easy to use.

More information

There is lots of information on the internet about creating accessible websites. Below is a selection of links you may find useful:

• Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The WAI  provides guidelines and resources to make the web accessible to disabled people. 
• WebXact is a free online service for testing the quality, accessibility and privacy of a webpage. 
• Webcredible is a usability and accessibility consultancy based in London.
• Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB). The RNIB website has a large section devoted to good design for people who are visually impaired.
• JAWS is a popular screen reader for Windows.
• W3C markup validation service. This is a free service that checks web documents for conformance to W3C recommendations and other standards.
• The Disability Rights Commission is an independent body who promote equality and opportunity for disabled people.