Website Accessibility Statement

The Caswell House website has been designed with accessibility issues in mind and has been tested in various ways to meet accessibility standards. If you have any questions or comments, please contact us.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on a website. With Windows-based browsers, you should be able to press and hold ALT + the relevant access key (as listed below). With Macintosh computers, press CONTROL + the access key required.

All pages on this site follow the UK Government recommended access keys standard:

  1. access key S (ALT+S) - Skip navigation
  2. access key 1 (ALT+1) - Home page
  3. access key 3 (ALT+3) - Site map / Table of contents
  4. access key 8 (ALT+8) - Terms and conditions
  5. access key 9 (ALT+9) - Feedback form
  6. access key 0 (ALT+0) - Accessibility / Access key details (This page)

Web Standards

  1. All pages on this site comply with all priority 1, 2, and in some cases, 3 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This is always a judgement call; many accessibility features can be measured, but many can not. I have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages are in compliance.
  2. All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and use CSS 2.1 for visual presentation. Use of tables for non-tabular information is kept to a minimum.
  3. All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles.

Links

  1. Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target (such as the headline of an article).
  2. Links are written to make sense out of context.
  3. There are no "javascript:" pseudo-links. All links can be followed in any browser, with or without scripting.
  4. There are no links that open new windows without warning.

Images

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

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.

Acronyms and abbreviations

Some of the content in this website may be technical which means there may be some acronyms and abbreviations. To help you understand these we have used special code to highlight the acronym. If your browser supports this code the full description will pop up when you hover over the acronym. It will also be highlighted with a dotted underline.

For example, Defra.

Tab Index

We have used Tab Index on pages that contain forms, to improve keyboard navigation. Tab Index means that when you use the 'Tab' button on your keyboard you will be taken directly to the form fields and buttons, instead of firstly having to tab through all the links that precede the form.

Tables

All the tables in our main content pages are marked up to show the relationship between the table headers and the table cells. We have also provided a summary and caption for the table to aid this understanding.

Forms

All of the input elements in the forms on this site are marked up with label tags. These provide several benefits:

  1. Users who have difficulty navigating through a form with a mouse can, for example, click on the text beside the form elements, such as text input boxes, in order to enter those elements.
  2. The use of label tags allows screen readers to intelligently announce what a particular input element is, by reading the label.

Language Changes

Where there is a change in the natural language in the page we have used special codes to tell browsers of this change. This is particularly relevant to those using 'talking' browsers, where a language change might otherwise cause confusion.

Print Style Sheets

Print style sheets are used to reformat page content so printed pages have unnecessary features and navigation removed.

Credits

For more details about accessibility visit the excellent Dive into Accessibility website.