Accessibility Statement

This Accessibility Statement includes information on: Access Keys, Standards Compliance, Links and Navigation, and Other Design Elements.

Access Keys:
Many browsers (currently: IE4+ [Windows], IE5+ [Mac], Mozilla [Windows / Linux], Netscape6+ [Windows], Opera7 [Windows / Linux]) support jumping to specific locations by pressing defined keys. On Windows, you press ALT + an access key. On Macintosh, you press Control + an access key. Internet Explorer users may also need to hit the "enter" key after releasing the ALT and access key buttons.
All pages on this site define these access keys:
s - start of main menu
1 - Home page
3 - Site map
4 - Search
9 - Feedback
0 - Accesskey details

Standards Compliance:
All pages on this site use valid HTML 4.01 Transitional, as defined by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). The only exception is the date-and-time function at the bottom of each page, which is not necessary to the functioning of the page.
All pages on this site are validated by the W3C CSS Validation Service.
All pages on this site are WCAG AAA approved. I have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages comply with all priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
All pages on this site are Section 508 approved. I have reviewed all the guidelines and believe that all these pages comply with all of the U.S. Federal Government Section 508 Guidelines.

Links and Navigation:
This site is coded so that the main navigation menu appears after the page content when viewed in a text-only browser.
There is a "top of page" link at the bottom of every page on this site, plus extra "top of page" links at intervals in longer pages.
All links on this site have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link (ALT text, in the case of image links) already fully describes the target.
All links on this site are written to make sense out of context. Many browsers, including JAWS, Home Page Reader, Lynx, and Opera, can extract the list of links on a page and allow the user to browse the list separately from the page.
Except for the within-page links "top of page" and "start of menu", link text and titles are only duplicated where two links point to the same address.
Adjacent links are separated either structurally or by interposing a non-blank character. This helps screen readers to render the links distinctly.
All links on this site are written in plain HTML, and can be followed in any browser even if scripting is turned off.
There are no links on this site that open new windows without warning.
All areas of this site can be accessed from any page.

Other Design Elements:
Although this site is optimised for viewing in the currently most-used screen resolution of 1024x768 pixels, with Internet Explorer (the currently most-used browser), I have designed it to be still readable and usable in either lower or higher resolutions, and with any browser.
This site uses Cascading Style Sheets for visual design, enabling the pages to be more easily rendered by non-visual user agents. If your browser does not support stylesheets, or if they are switched off, the content of each page is still readable and usable.
This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
The colour combinations used on this site have been checked for visibility to people affected by colour-blindness.
All images belonging to this site have been optimised for fast loading.
All content images on this site include appropriate ALT text. All purely decorative images have the null tag ALT="".
There are no data tables on this site. Tables used for layout purposes are marked as such, and all pages on this site are still readable and usable if your browser does not support tables.
For every form input on this site (except the "site search" which is not under my full control), the associated text has a label tag wrapped around it which explicitly refers to the form input. This not only makes it easier for screen readers to identify what the input is, it also gives the sighted user a larger area to click on with their mouse.
The "natural language" (English) of every page on this site is specified in the markup. Where there is a change in the "natural language" of the text on any page of this site, the change is indicated with the appropriate lang="languagecode" attribute.
This site has no animated graphics, no image maps, no audio, no JavaScript, no ActiveX controls, and no Java applets. The only Flash used is the 'current date and time' display on the index page, which is not neccessary to the functioning of the page.

If you have any questions or comments concerning this Accessibility Statement or the accessibility of this site, please contact me. I welcome all feedback.

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