Accessibility
Commitment to accessibility
We are firmly committed to designing websites that are usable by as many people as possible. People with certain disabilities find using the web difficult and many sites do not accommodate those with visual or other disabilities. Our websites consistently score highly in accessibility tests and conform strictly to the relevant W3C (www.w3c.org) / WAI and SENDA 2001 guidelines.
Quite aside from any social responsibilities, we believe that maximising website accessibility has a persuasive business rationale. If a user with a spoken-word-browser (e.g. JAWS) can view/read your website properly, so can the businessperson viewing it on their PDA or mobile phone. Likewise, well ordered information, clearly labelled images and descriptive directory names required under WAI guidelines will help maximise search engine rankings.
As standard, we aim to meet worldwide accessibility guidelines and exceed those set by the government and the RNIB.
Designing to common standards
Our sites are hand-coded using the latest web-standard technologies such as XHTML and CSS. As such, our work is built to last well into the future as well as making the content available to very old browsers. Our sites will benefit from being quicker to download, even to those people using slower dial-up modems and will be viewable without styles to accommodate older platforms and non-standard environments (e.g. PDAs and other mobile technology).
