Web Design using Web Standards

This site has been built using current World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommended web standards and guidelines for compliance and accessibility.

Standards Compliance & Interoperability

Care has been taken to create interoperable Web pages, that validate in accordance with the W3C automated Markup Validation Service. HTML and CSS compliance are checked against the W3C's on-line automated validators, for interoperability across browsers and platforms. As such, the information on this website should be accessible by all current standards compliant browsers, as well as screen readers, and text based browsers such as LYNX.

Pages have been checked for accessibility against the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) at Level Double-A conformance. This website complies with all of the automatic checkpoints of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 1.0 at Level Double-A Conformance (Priority 1 and Priority 2 checkpoints), as tested and verified by the Watchfire WebXACT service.

Properly Structured Code

This site uses properly formatted and structured code that adheres to current Web Standards. All pages are written in XHTML and use CSS for visual layout. Each page uses well-structured semantic markup, for example using header tags like <h1>, <h2>, and <p> paragraph tags to logically structure the content. If your browsing device doesn't support stylesheets, or if you have them turned off, the content should still be accessible, readable and understandable.

Users of the JAWS screenreader can skip between header tags using ALT+INSERT+1, ALT+INSERT+2, etc.

The archaic practice of using Tables and use of spacer GIF’s for page layout is avoided, as are deprecated tags such as FONT, overuse of line break <BR> tags, etc.

Why Web Accessibility is Important

As the Web evolves, more and more people are recognising the importance of accessible website design and web standards. A full introduction and explanation to Web Standards, Accessible Websites, and why they are important, is available in this article :-

Accessible Websites - a "Win-Win" Situation

Find out more about Accessibility...

You can find out more about Accessibility and Web Standards Compliance by using the following links (all open in a new browser window) :

Introduction to Web Accessibility from the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
The Web Standards Project website : fighting for standards to ensure web access for all
The Dive Into Accessibility website : 30 days to a more accessible web site
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)