Responsibility to the environment & sustainability in support of the Environment Agencies Directive
Accessibility Policy
The internet is a medium that should be open to everyone. However, perception often differs from reality and as such surfing the web can sometimes be a rather exclusive, rather than inclusive experience.
Poor accessibility means that everyday activities carried out online - checking email, reading a news story, buying flight tickets or balancing bank accounts - become a nightmare for many disabled surfers.
The good news, however, is the net is getting easier to use and there are many commendable efforts made by organisations to improve accessibility for the over half-a-billion people in the world who are disabled in one way or another. Under the Disability Discrimination Act, companies such as ourselves must ensure that content is accessible to all users.
Accessibility for everyone is very important to us. We regard it as another challenge for creativity and innovation and not as a barrier. We strive to create a professional and accessible site that can be enjoyed by everyone.
What is accessibility? Accessibility basically entails providing flexibility to accommodate each user's needs and preferences. In an internet context, accessibility means making computer technology such as web pages and applications/software more useful and flexible to an individual needs.
What are the main issues? Sadly, the internet isn't always accessible to everyone. The main issues which can cause problems include: Complex and convoluted navigational menus that are a nightmare to follow. Overly designed websites that use fancy graphics and flashing images. The use of small fonts which cannot be re-sized by the user - making it difficult to read even my people with minor vision problems. The lack of use of Alt tags to accompany images.
There are several ways in which websites can make themselves more accessible to all audiences. Above all, websites need to adopt certain accessibility standards.
Accessibility standards; The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has established a set of guidelines so that organisations can design websites that can be used by people with disabilities.
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), part of the W3C, in co-ordination with organisations around the world, is pursuing web accessibility through primary areas of work.
Poor accessibility means that everyday activities carried out online - checking email, reading a news story, buying flight tickets or balancing bank accounts - become a nightmare for many disabled surfers.
The good news, however, is the net is getting easier to use and there are many commendable efforts made by organisations to improve accessibility for the over half-a-billion people in the world who are disabled in one way or another. Under the Disability Discrimination Act, companies such as ourselves must ensure that content is accessible to all users.
Accessibility for everyone is very important to us. We regard it as another challenge for creativity and innovation and not as a barrier. We strive to create a professional and accessible site that can be enjoyed by everyone.
What is accessibility? Accessibility basically entails providing flexibility to accommodate each user's needs and preferences. In an internet context, accessibility means making computer technology such as web pages and applications/software more useful and flexible to an individual needs.
What are the main issues? Sadly, the internet isn't always accessible to everyone. The main issues which can cause problems include: Complex and convoluted navigational menus that are a nightmare to follow. Overly designed websites that use fancy graphics and flashing images. The use of small fonts which cannot be re-sized by the user - making it difficult to read even my people with minor vision problems. The lack of use of Alt tags to accompany images.
There are several ways in which websites can make themselves more accessible to all audiences. Above all, websites need to adopt certain accessibility standards.
Accessibility standards; The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has established a set of guidelines so that organisations can design websites that can be used by people with disabilities.
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), part of the W3C, in co-ordination with organisations around the world, is pursuing web accessibility through primary areas of work.