Accessibility

Accessibility

We have built the WMCCE website to comply with internationally accepted web standards, including accessibility guidelines, in order to make it accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of personal disability or browsing software.

Web accessibility is the practice of making website content available to all users, particularly those with disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. It includes making a website as accessible as possible regardless of browsing technology, such as for people with text-only web browsers and old browser versions

WMCCE is committed to making its website accessible to as many people as possible. To this end we are endeavouring to meet all AA accessibility checkpoints as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Compliance with web accessibility is an ongoing process which we are regularly working to improve. In view of this, there may be some content which does not yet meet all the guidelines. If you experience problems accessing any of the information on our site, please contact our web team at webmaster@wmcce.org and we will try our best to fix the problem or provide the information in an alternative format.

Standards Compliance

Valid XHTML and CSS

Our pages are written in valid XHTML 1.0 Strict, with the exception of certain pages containing embedded maps which are written in valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Our pages are styled using valid CSS2.1 code. We validate our pages regularly to ensure this standard is maintained.

Accessibility standards

WMCCE recommends compliance with the WCAG AA standard, and this is the standard we apply to our webpages. Some of the guidelines require interpretation and we have used informed judgement to implement them with the needs of users foremost in mind.

Standards and guidelines do not necessarily address all accessibility problems, so we particularly encourage anyone having difficulties using our site to contact us directly so we can fix any outstanding problems. Comments on any matter concerning our pages, including the accessibility of our pages, can be sent to webmaster@wmcce.org.

Navigation Aids

We have incorporated the following features into our site to help you find your way around:

Search box

  • A search box allowing you to type in search terms and search our site is available on every page.
  • Advanced search options are available from the search results page.

Site map

If you are having any trouble locating the information you are looking for, a full site map is available from the top menu on every page.

Links

We try to ensure all our link text is written to make sense out of context.

Access Keys

Due to the current lack of a consistent standard for the implementation of access keys, and the resulting unreliability in the way they work, we have decided at this stage not to include them on our pages. We do however feel that they are a useful idea in principle, so we will monitor developments on this issue and hope that in due course a standard will be agreed within the Web community, at which point we will be willing to adopt it. In the meantime we will be happy to hear any views you may have on this subject.

However, it is still possible to navigate our website using your keyboard. This can be done using the following keys:

  • Arrow keys to scroll up or down the page
  • Tab key to move between links
  • Return or Enter key to select a link
  • Backspace key to go back to the previous page

Visual Design

Presentation

  • We use stylesheets for visual layout combined with structured markup of headings, paragraphs and lists to separate content from presentation.
  • The content of our pages is still readable if stylesheets are turned off or unavailable.
  • We have used relative font sizes on our pages to ensure text is resizeable in visual browsers.

Images

  • All content images have alt text providing equivalent text to describe their function.
  • Purely decorative images have empty alt text, i.e. alt="", which means screen readers may ignore the images completely.

Colour

Our website uses colour combinations intended to provide sufficient contrast between background and foreground across the site.

Browser compatibility

We test our pages to ensure the information they contain is accessible in a range of different browsers. By adhering to web standards we avoid the use of features specific to one browser. If you experience problems whilst using assistive software to access our site, please do let us know.

Help with accessing PDFs on our website

If you are having trouble reading a PDF document on this website, Adobe offers a free online tool for converting PDF documents to HTML or text. To use the tool you will need to know the URL (web address) of the document you want to convert. This can be found in the browser address bar at the top of the screen and begins with http://

Contact us

If you experience problems accessing any of the information on our site, please contact our web team at webmaster@wmcce.org and we will try our best to fix the problem or provide the information in an alternative format.