Accessibility Statement
We have made every effort to ensure that the design of this web site conforms to the highest web standards for both usability and accessibility. The pages and templates produced by the web team pass all of the 'best practice' guidelines, tests and standards listed below.
1. W3C HTML Validation
Valid HTML is designed so that devices (such as printers, phones, televisions or visual aides) can display web pages without needing the page translated.
2. W3C CSS Validation
Cascading Style Sheets allow web pages to be designed separately from the content. This allows the page designer to create various 'versions' from the same content (i.e. for high visibility pages, or for text-only versions of the site).
Pages created with CSS files tend to be far smaller - and download quicker.
These two standards allow this web site to:
- be accessed by other technologies than just a web browser,
- be displayed in an understandable manner for all users,
- load quicker,
- display in text-only, and printer only versions,
- be easier to update,
- be cheaper to maintain.
3. W3C-AA and Bobby 2 Approval
AA approval from the W3C are the guidelines for creating accessible web pages. The templates and pages produced by the web team meet this criteria.
Bobby is a similar set of guidelines by another organization - Watchfire.
By following these guidelines we are trying to make sure that all the information on our web site is available to everybody: not just the text, but the information contained in the images and other media.
Our pages have been designed to use a font that was specifically designed for reading text on a screen, and also common to all machines.
3. Plain English
It is an aim of BNF that as many documents and publications as possible meet the standards raised by The Plain English Campaign. Each department is responsible for training staff, and sending its documents to be rated.
These aims and skills are being used when writing for the web.
4. Forms and E-Mail
We have replaced the use of e-mail contact details for public users of our site with online forms. There are several benefits by doing this :
- most importantly, users without e-mail capabilities will be able to contact us - these could be people using the computers at libraries, schools or colleges, behind a firewall or at an internet cafe,
- to defeat e-mail address harvesters - tools that collect e-mail addresses for spammers - and reduce spam,
- to reduce the amount of personal e-mail addresses in documents - if that person is not available (on vacation, or no longer in that post) they won't be able to reply.
If you discover a page that you think falls below an acceptable standard please contact us.
