Accessible Design Practices
Every effort has been made to ensure maximum
accessibility by applying standards-compliant design to the production
of this website.
Standards-compliant design
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), along with other groups and standards bodies,
has established technologies for creating and interpreting web-based content.
These technologies, which are called “web standards”, are carefully designed
to deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of web users while ensuring
the long-term viability of any document published on the web.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and xHTML
CSS is a simple but powerful mechanism for defining the style and
presentation (fonts, colours, margins and borders) of web documents.
xHTML combines the power and versatility of XML (Extensible Markup
Language) with the familiar web language of HTML. xHTML is the next
version of HTML and is designed to allow for richer web pages capable of
displaying on a widening range of browser platforms, including mobile
phones, PDAs and televisions.
Site accessibility features
This site employs many features to make information more accessible:
- All images have text alternates (ALT attributes).
- Pages are organised to be fully functional, even with JavaScript turned off.
- All text uses relative font sizes so text can be enlarged or reduced using the text size options available in visual browsers.
- The site can be navigated without the use of a mouse (see ‘Access Keys’).
- All pages use flexible page formats so pages can be automatically resized for different window sizes and screen resolutions.
- Page formatting is achieved with CSS to ensure that the semantic structure of the information is preserved.
- This site follows World Wide Web Consortium recommendations and accessibility guidelines.
Metadata
Metadata has been added to all pages to provide important orientation information to users. The metadata provided includes:
- a meaningful page title;
- the document language;
- a !DOCTYPE statement to validate to a published formal grammar;
- a description of the site’s content;
- keywords describing the site’s contents.
Browsers
You will be able to best experience this site and take full advantage
of its features by using a standards-compliant browser. The following
browsers support numerous web standards including CSS, xHTML and the DOM (a universal means of controlling the behaviour of web
pages):
Browser support & testing
This website/application has been tested and confirmed to function with the following browsers.
Browser support & testing
| Browser |
Version |
OS |
OS Version |
| Variations in performance and/or visual styling may exist from browser to browser depending on the operating system and the browser’ support for CSS. |
| Internet Explorer |
6.0 |
Windows XP |
5.1 |
| Mozilla Camino |
2006021400 (1.0) |
Mac OS X |
10.4.5 |
| Mozilla Firefox |
1.5.0.1 |
Mac OS X |
10.4.5 |
| Mozilla Firefox |
1.5.0.1 |
Windows XP |
5.1 |
| Mozilla Netscape |
7.1 |
Mac OS X |
10.4.5 |
| Opera |
8.52 |
Mac OS X |
10.4.5 |
| Safari |
2.0.3 |
Mac OS X |
10.4.5 |
JavaScript
This site may use JavaScript to improve site design, aid
user–interaction and validate forms. The use of JavaScript has
been carefully considered and implemented so that it does not negatively
impact site accessibility. In particular, we have worked to:
- ensure the JavaScript is directly accessible;
- provide an accessible, non-JavaScript alternative when JavaScript cannot be made natively accessible;
- use device-independent event handlers;
- ensure that normal browser functionality is not modified in a way that may cause confusion or inaccessibility.
Bandwidth considerations and processor speed
Efforts have been made to ensure that this website is as
bandwidth-friendly as possible. However, your experience here will
be enhanced if you access this site with a fast connection
to the Internet (DSL, ISDN, Cable, T-1 etc.) and a computer operating
at 500MHz or faster.
Site navigation
A consistent navigation structure has been provided on all pages of
this site. The navigation bar may be used as an indication of which
section of the site you are currently viewing. The selected link is
clearly highlighted in the navigation bar.
Links are displayed clearly and in context. The ‘title’
tag is used to provide additional information about links where
necessary. This additional information may be viewed in some browsers
when your mouse hovers over the link. Some screenreaders may
also take advantage of this information.
Access Keys
Access Keys have been implemented throughout the site. Access Keys
allow you to activate a link using only your keyboard. A full list of
the Access Keys used on this site is provided on the Access Keys page.
Use of text
Most navigation elements are plain text and we have provided text
alternatives to graphics on the site.
Users who wish to increase the size of the text on screen may do so
under the ‘View’ selection on the browser’s main
menu, you should find an option called ‘Text Zoom’, ‘Text Magnification’, ‘Text Size’ or
‘Font Size’. From that point it should be relatively simple
to find and select an additional sub menu option that adjusts text size
to your needs.
Visual design and encoding
This site uses Cascading Style Sheets for visual layout. In this way,
structure is separated from design. The use of Cascading Style Sheets
allows users to apply their own style sheets. The site may, however, be
viewed without stylesheets. No information is lost when stylesheets are
disabled.
Relative values are used for all measurements, including font size.
This allows the site to adjust to the user’s screen size. It also
allows the user to set his/her own preferred font size.
This site was designed to take full advantage of version 6+ browsers.
However, the site may also be viewed using version 4 browsers. While it is possible
to view the site on both these browser groups without any loss of
information, there will be some visual differences due to varying
browser support for Cascading Style Sheets.
Colour
The site has been designed using colours that should provide enough contrast for users who suffer from
colour blindness.
Images
This site’s interface makes carefully considered use of images
and where images do appear, they include text alternates to enhance
accessibility.
Content
This site makes use of xHTML tags that provide additional information about
structural items. These are used to add summary descriptions to tables,
explain hierarchy within tables, provide emphasis on words and phrases,
provide an explanation of abbreviations and add structure to forms.
These tags are often hidden from visual browsers but provide valuable
information to non-visual browsers.
Lists
Many lists have title attributes which describe the content of the
list in greater detail. Elements are marked up as lists if they follow a
logical, structured order.
Links
Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater
detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target
(such as the headline of an article or name of a person). Links are
written to make sense out of context.
References
Accessibility software
- JAWS, a screen reader for Windows.
- Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows.
- 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.
