Accessibility

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Last revised: 10 April 2008

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Accessibility targets

All web pages will be assessed by the guidelines published by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), available at www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/ (External link) . Kennet District Council requires that:

All new web pages should be written to at least AA standard.

All existing pages should meet at least A standard. Pages will be bought up to AA standard as they are periodically revised.

Any third party who is engaged to design and build web pages for the council, whether hosted within or without the *.kennet.gov.uk domain, will be required to comply with these guidelines. Sites will be checked periodically.

New content will be either written or edited by a trained editor to ensure it is written as clearly as possible. Legacy content will be re-edited where necessary as it is revised.

Compliance statement

With the exceptions listed below, all pages within the www.kennet.gov.uk domain meet WCAG level A. We are working towards meeting WCAG level AA for all pages and work has already started on WCAG level AAA

Because of our reliance on third-party vendors for some web systems, some parts of the website do not yet meet the WCAG A or AA accessibility criteria. These systems are the online maps, payments, planning explorer, tourism, accounts, surveys and search engine systems. We are currently working with our suppliers to provide upgraded, accessible interfaces into these systems.

We are also heavily reliant on non-HTML-based web content, particularly PDF files. We are investigating mechanisms for making PDF documents more accessible. More information about the accessibility support within PDF documents is available at www.adobe.com/enterprise/accessibility/acrobat70.html (External link)

Accessibility features of this website

The council website does not use frames.

The page layout and colour scheme are implemented using cascading style sheets (CSS) and can be over-ridden by the user. All text can be enlarged or reduced to suit your preferences.

The source code is structured so that the main content of the page precedes the navigation. The first link on every page will jump directly to the page content.

All pages start with a heading 1 element. Sub-headings are used to further divide the page.

Tables are only used for tabular data (that is, they are not used for layout purposes,  Data tables are marked up correctly with table headings and scope attributes. We avoid using complex tables (that is, tables with two or more logical levels of headings).

There is some JavaScript used on each page. Currently, this JavaScript has four functions:

To clear form field text inputs of default text when the field gains focus and to provide a subtle background colour to form fields that have focus;

To provide a list of links on each page when printing;

To provide highlighting of data tables when the cursor hovers over a row;

To instigate the online user survey software8 we use.

However, the site is still completely useable if JavaScript is disabled.

We do not use access keys. Research suggests that these can sometimes conflict with shortcut keys used by assistive technologies.

All pages validate to an official W3C Document Type Definition. Pages are checked for compliance as part of the publishing process.

How to change the appearance of this website

Where possible, we have created this site so that your own preferences for colours, fonts and text sizes will take precedence over ours. The following resources will help you modify your own browser and operating system preferences to suit your own needs:

Advice from the BBC showing users how to make full use of accessibility settings in browsers and operating systems.

Advice for Microsoft users (External link)

Advice for Apple users (External link)

Advice for Linux users

 (External link)

Contact us

We welcome any comments about our website, or on any of the details on this page. Please feel free to contact us.