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Accessibility

We have endeavoured to make this website as accessible and easy to use as possible regardless of computer literacy or mobility and in compliance with the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines. 

Recent versions of the main browsers will allow you to customise your browsing experience by adjusting the settings for colour contrasts and font size. However, if you have any questions or comments, do feel free to email us at enquiries@ash.org.uk.

Standards compliance

  1. This site aims to be standard compliant with many tests used and lots of semantic markup e.g. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT INSERT 3.

Images

  1. All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
  2. Complex images include LONGDESC attributes or inline descriptions to explain the significance of each image to non-visual readers.

Visual design

  1. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
  2. This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
  3. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility references

  1. W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
  2. W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
  3. W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer's guide to accessibility.
  4. U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

Accessibility software

  1. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
  2. Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
  3. Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features including text zooming, user stylesheets and image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.

Accessibility services

  1. Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.
  2. HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
  3. Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
  4. Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.

Related resources

  1. WebAIM, a non-profit organisation dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.
  2. Designing More Usable Web Sites, a large list of additional resources.