24/7 Grid

Accessibility Statement

We have made every effort to ensure that all users can gain access to this transitional site, but we would welcome any feedback that you feel would enable us to make our site more accessible.

Standards compliance

• All pages on this site are accessible, and comply with the Disabilities Discrimination Act 1995.
• All pages on this site meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) priority 3 standards, given that some of the priority 3 checkpoints are now satisfied through browser technology. i.e. checkpoint 10.4 "Until user agents handle empty controls correctly, include default, place-holding characters in edit boxes and text areas."
• Pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 transitional.
• Relative headings sizes have been used on all pages, which will allow screen reader users to navigate using headings.

Links

• All links are written to make sense out of context.

Images

• All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.

Visual design

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

Accessibility references

• W3 accessibility guidelines (This link will open in a new browser window), which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
• W3 accessibility techniques (This link will open in a new browser window), which explains how to implement each guideline.
• W3 accessibility checklist (This link will open in a new browser window), a busy developer's guide to accessibility.
• U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines (This link will open in a new browser window).

Accessibility software

• JAWS (This link will open in a new browser window), a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
• Lynx (This link will open in a new browser window), a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
• Links (This link will open in a new browser window), a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
• Opera (This link will open in a new browser window), a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user stylesheets, image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.
• NILS Accessibility toolbar (This link will open in a new browser window), an useful browser based tool which allows users to test various site accessibility issues

Accessibility services

• HTML Validator (This link will open in a new browser window), a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
• Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer (This link will open in a new browser window), a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
• Lynx Viewer (This link will open in a new browser window), a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.
• Shaw Trust Web Accreditation (This link will open in a new browser window) - a web accreditation service run by one of the largest pan-disabilities organisations in the UK

Related resources

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

Accessibility books we recommend

• Joe Clark: Building Accessible Websites (This link will open in a new browser window).
• Jim Thatcher et al: Constructing Accessible Web Sites (This link will open in a new browser window). Less comprehensive than Joe Clark's book, but goes into greater depth in the topics it covers. Gives screenshots of how various screen readers and alternative browsers interpret various tags and mark-up. Also has an amazing chapter on the current state of legal accessibility requirements.