Accessibility Information

The Web Accessibility Initiative run by the World Wide Web Consortium recommends designing websites to ensure maximum accessibility. Further, in the UK, the Disability Discrimination Act makes it illegal for any organisation or service to discriminate against users on the grounds of disability. However, building accessible websites is not just about complying to legislative whims. Accessible design is good design: building a website with accessibility in mind from the outset ensures that any user, regardless of their ability, computer system, or web browser will find a site straightforward to navigate.

This page gives more details about the accessible design of The Pequod website, including the use of access keys.

Accesskeys

Accesskeys offer an alternative, keyboard-based way of quickly navigating a website using all the major web browsers.

All websites for the United Kingdom Government should follow a consistent set of keys and, as it seems sensible to make as many websites as possible follow a standard code, the access keys on this website broadly follow these guidelines. The following Accesskeys can be used at any point to take you to the relevant page:

• s Skip navigation links and jump straight to content
• 1 Home page
• 2 About This Site
• 3 Site Map and Search
• 8 Copyright, Terms and Conditions
• 9 Feedback Form
• 0 Access Key details (this page)

To use access keys on Internet Explorer 4, press and hold the ALT key (or CTRL for Macintosh users), then press the relevant letter or number.

To use access keys on Internet Explorer 5 and above, press and hold the ALT key (or CTRL for Macintosh users), then press the relevant letter or number. Finally, press ENTER.

To use access keys on Firefox, press and hold the ALT and SHIFT key, then press the relevant letter or number.

To use access keys on Opera, press SHIFT and ESC, then press the relevant letter or number.

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Standards

This website conforms with all of the standards up to Level A, and meets many of the requirements for Level AA. In addition to these guidelines, the website has been set-up with the following criteria to help access generally:

• All pages and fonts have been tested to work on a variety of screen resolutions. All font sizes can be adjusted to suit the viewer's preferences by going to the 'View-Text Size' menu (for Internet Explorer) or 'View-Text Zoom' menu (for Netscape Navigator).
• The use of CSS style-sheets to control formatting ensures that users can apply their own stylesheets to control font size and colour if they wish. Page layout is controlled using CSS floats rather than tables.
• All the pages are written to the XHTML 1.0 Transitional definition, to ensure that they will remain compatible in future browsers, as well as being compatible with almost all existing software.
• Access Keys are provided to allow users to navigate the site more quickly when using a keyboard.

One problem faced when attempting to design accessible web pages is that screen readers and other accessibility tools all work in different ways. Although I have tried to test the site using a range of software and practices, if you experience difficulty with the site, please provide details using the Your Comments form. I can then attempt to sort out the problem and make the site more accessible to future users.

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