Our approach to accessibility

We are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audiences.

1 in 5 people have a long term illness, impairment or disability, and many more have a temporary or situational disability. (Government digital service 2020. Source (page 7) – Department for Work and Pension Family Resources Survey 2018/19)

This website endeavours to conform to level AA of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.

This site has been built using code compliant with W3C standards for XHTML and CSS. The site displays correctly in current browsers and using standards compliant XHTML/CSS code means any future browsers will also display it correctly.

Access features

The following features are designed to improve accessibility for users with disabilities:

  • Tab indexes are set such that the content links are presented first in the sequence they appear on the page
  • Navigation items have background changes to highlight links and current page
  • Links are written to make sense out of context
  • This web site can be navigated without the use of a mouse
  • All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes
  • Content has been separated from visual design and cascading style sheets (CSS) are used for visual layout
  • Headings (H1, H2 and subsequent headers) have been set on each page to allow ease of access and page structure
  • Only relative font sizes, compatible with the user specified “text size” option in visual browsers are used
  • Links to external web sites open up a new browser window where this is supported by the browser otherwise the same browser window is used
  • Online resources are available in at least two different types of document
  • If your browser or browsing device does not support style sheets at all, the content of each page is still readable

Further information

More information on accessibility along with advice on using Internet browsers is on the BBC MY Web, My Way website

From time to time it is necessary to carry out changes and developments to areas of the website, unfortunately during these times these areas may not fully conform to the accessibility guidelines outlined above.

If you should experience any difficulty in accessing any area of the website, please don’t hesitate to get in touch using our form outlining the exact nature of the problem and your contact details. You can also contact us via email at [email protected]. If you would prefer to speak to us via telephone or video call, please mention this in your message and a member of our team can arrange this with you.