This website is committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience. We actively work to ensure that this website is accessible and usable by people of all abilities.
Our website can be viewed on a range of different screen sizes and the size of text can be changed to suit different people. We have also included a search facility, sitemap and glossary, to help people find information more easily.
Using your web browser, you can change the size of text on this website, this can simply be achieved by pressing and holding the [CONTROL] key and then either the [+] or [-] keys until the desired text size is reached
You can also make other helpful changes in your browser, as well as within your computer generally. To find out what else you can do, visit My Web My Way at http://www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility/ (External link will open in a new browser window).
At the time of launch, this website was not known to have any limitations which would make it difficult to access for any particular group of users, however that was over ten years ago and there may be some very old, lesser used, pages that are not quite up to standard. We will upgrade these older pages as we come across them. The rest of the website however is in constant development, there may be occasions where new functionality causes specific issues until we have implemented a resolution to those issues.
We are always looking for ways to help people get the best experience from this website. If there is information you think should be included on this page, or if you experience any problem accessing the site then please contact us.
Please note: for advice on what information to include when you contact us, we recommending you read "Contacting Organizations about Inaccessible Websites" at http://www.w3.org/WAI/users/inaccessible (External website will open in a new browser window)
It is our intention that all pages of this website conform to level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0. These guidelines are the internationally recognized benchmark for building accessible websites.
To verify WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines)
conformity level
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The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines explain how to make websites more accessible for people with disabilities. Conformity to these guidelines also makes websites more user friendly for all people.
This website has been built to conform to W3C standards for HTML and CSS. These technologies are relied upon throughout the site. It is intended that the site displays correctly in all popular web browsers, and degrades gracefully in older browsers.
To verify HTML and XHTML pages
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To verify CSS
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In addition this website uses JavaScript and occasionally links to third-party documents using PDF Technology. These technologies are not relied upon and the website works perfectly well without them. Where JavaScript has been used, the content meets the same high levels of accessibility as the rest of the site.
This site was tested and found to be accessible to people using keyboard-only control, touch screens and screen reader access.
This accessibility statement was issued on 14th July 2012
