Our Website Accessibility Statement:
Details of our Accessibility goals and accessibility features implemented...
Shire Direct recognise and understand the importance of providing a website that is accessible to all user groups, including the disabled, the visually impaired and those with motor deficiencies and cognitive disabilities. We are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest audience possible, regardless of technology or ability.
The information contained on this page details the accessibility features we've already implemented on our site, as well as our intentions in terms of further improving the accessibility of our website, and how we plan to maintain these standards.
Website Accessibility Table of Contents:
Introduction
We are actively and continually working to constantly improve and increase the accessibility and usability of our website, and in doing so we adhere to many of the standards and guidelines available today. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities. Conformance to these guidelines should help to make the web a more user friendly place for all people.
In this document we'll detail our aims and goals in terms of accessibility standards compliance, as well as detail our progress in reaching these aims. We'll also discuss and explore some of the many features we've included and implemented to help improve our website's overall usability and accessibility.
Guidelines and Standards Compliance Aims and current progress:
- We initially aim to meet all Priority 1 requirements of the World Wide Web Consortium Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WC3 WCAG 1.0). Achieving this standard is commonly known as Conformance Level 'A' compliance. These guidelines state that web content developers must meet the requirements identified for 'Priority 1', otherwise one or more user groups may find it 'impossible' to access information within the website. We are currently close to fully complying with this standard and will update this page upon full compliance in the near future.
- We ultimately also aim to meet Priority 2 requirements of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0), and achieve Conformance Level 'Double-A' standard. These guidelines state that a web content developer should meet the requirements identified in 'Priority 2', otherwise one or more user groups may find it 'difficult' to access information within the website. We currently meet many of these requirements, but still have a way to go before we have fully achieved compliance at this level. However, we are making good progress and hope to have achieved this standard in the latter half of 2008.
- We also aim to meet some, but not necessarily all of the standards identified in priority 3 requirements of the WC3 WCAG 1.0 that are appropriate to our website. The guidelines state that a web content developer may meet the requirements identified in 'Priority 3', otherwise one or more user groups may find it 'somewhat difficult' to access information within the website. Achieving full compliance at this level is known as Conformance Level 'Triple-A' standard. It is unlikely that we will achieve full 'Triple-A' compliance as many of the requirements are suggestions only.
- An update of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines in the form of WCAG 2.0 is currently in development, and we will endeavour to monitor for this documents final publication.
- It is our intention to study, and follow as closely as we can, the best practice guidelines identified in the publication 'Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 78' produced by the British Standards Institute (BSI) in collaboration with the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) to further ensure this website and any new corporate websites we commission are as accessible as possible.
Validation
HTML 4.01 Strict Compliancy:
Most pages on our site have been passed as being compliant with HTML 4.01 Strict by the W3C online markup validation service. We will be conducting final formal validation checks on every page across our website again over the next few weeks to ensure all pages display and function correctly as intended.
CSS 2.0 Compliancy:
We are currently working hard towards ensuring our Cascading Style Sheets are fully compliant with CSS level 2 standards and we hope to achieve this in the first half of 2008.
General Accessibility Information
The Shire Direct website was designed and built with Accessibility in mind right from it's inception. Some of the general features we employ on our site that we believe will help to improve everybody's general user experience include:
- Most pages on our site have had their underlying HTML source code validated to ensure they display and function correctly as intended.
- Our website makes use of Cascading Style Sheets to control the layout and presentational aspects of all pages within the website, these Cascading Style Sheets have also been validated to ensure our site works as intended for all user groups.
- Careful and selective use of text colour's and background colour's, especially where text appears, to ensure all text is legible.
- Avoiding the use of flickering, flashing, blinking animated graphical/text elements.
Let's look at some of the specific features we've implemented in terms of accessibility, and how we've handled accessibility with general components of our website.
Images
Our site has been designed to be fully functional and readable with text-based browsers or with images disabled. Using the HTML "alt" attribute, we've provided any text that may be embedded in an image and provided descriptive explanations of what an image may convey where appropriate. Any images that are used for purely decorative or formatting purposes only have empty alt attributes.
Scripts
Throughout our site we make use of Javascript to enhance and improve the overall usability and site experience for those users who are able to benefit from these features. Where possible and appropriate we have endeavoured to provide alternate functionality for these scripts for those users who may have Javascript disabled in their browsing device.
Tables
Our site generally only uses tables for the presentation of tabular data only - and not for website layout purposes which is controlled by cascading style sheets. We have tried to adhere to Web Content Accessibility Guideline 5 relating to table usage, throughout our site, as closely as possible, to ensure any tables used for the presentation of tabular data use correct mark-up, and avoid using structural mark-up wherever possible, and also include captions where appropriate.
Forms
Forms used on this website can be accessed and navigated solely through the use of the keyboard.
Pop-up's / New Browser Windows and Tabs
This website avoids the use of pop-up windows for any purpose. Additionally, all links whether internal or external will open in the current browser window and tab (where appropriate), with the exception of links to PDF documents which are opened in a new browser window as many users accidentally close their browser window after having finished viewing a PDF from within their browser. Wherever we do link to an on-site PDF document with a new target window, we announce that the link will open in a new window in both the title attribute of the link and through an on-page indicator.
Frames
Shire Direct do not make use of frames or i-frames on our website for any purpose as they can hinder website accessibility.
Navigation
Consistent menu, header and footer navigation is maintained throughout the pages of this website. The site is also fully accessible using the keyboard and can also be navigated with scripting disabled. Our navigational links are logically grouped and clearly identified.
Skip link
We've provided a 'Skip to main content' link (also known as a 'skip to' or 'skip' link) as the first element at the top of every page enabling all users to immediately by-pass navigational and Page Masthead elements and dive right into the main page content. Our skip links are purposely left visible so all user groups, especially those who may require them most, are aware of their existence and are able to benefit from them.
Access Keys
We do not employ the use of Access Keys for quick navigation and 'page-to-page' access of commonly used pages on our site. The reason being is that the implementation of these shortcut keys can sometimes conflict with other shortcut keys or keyboard commands that may be configured by default, or otherwise, in other browsers / assistive technology, thus defeating the object of their use and the very people they were ultimately intended for and in the process actually making the site less accessible! Additionally, some browsers do not support the use of this technology.
In summary, like many people, including the BBC as well as the UK Government, we love the idea of Access Keys! But until a universal standard is agreed upon and implemented by developers of browsers and assistive technology, this feature is more likely to hamper certain groups of users rather than assist them! Rest assured that we will closely monitor the situation regarding Access Keys and potential alternative solutions in the months ahead to see if any new technologies, ideas and agreed universal standards arise for this form of feature, and we do of course welcome any feedback and suggestions you may have with regards to implementing a feature of this nature.
Colour Deficiency Testing
Our main site template and several key pages on our site have been extensively tested to ensure all text including that embedded in images is legible under various different simulated colour blindness / colour deficiency conditions. We will continue to test existing inner pages under these conditions through the course of 2008 to see if any difficulties are encountered.
Maintaining Accessibility Standards
We will continually review the pages of our website and modify them where appropriate and necessary to ensure they continue to be accessible.
The process for any new pages or sections created from January 2008 onwards includes ensuring that these pages and sections meet the standards we've outlined above before being published.
Finally...
Whilst Shire Direct strive to adhere to the guidelines and standards for accessibility and usability identified above, occasionally it is not always possible to do so, or do so immediately in all areas of the website. Also, we are only human and we may not get things right every time when it comes to accessibility, despite our best efforts. It's a fastly developing area and a continual learning process for us but one which we must strive to achieve to continually improve upon.
Rest assured that Shire Direct are continually seeking out solutions that will bring all areas of our website to the high standards of accessibility we have set for ourselves. In the meantime, in the unfortunate event that you should experience any difficulty whatsoever in using our website, then please do not hesitate to contact us, or send us feedback with any comments or queries you may have, we'd love to hear from you, and we'll do our best to assist in any way we are able to.
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