Accessibility Statement
emapsite is committed to making its website available to as
many people as possible meeting the requirements of the Disability
Discrimination Act and makes every effort to ensure its communications are
accessible to those with special needs, including those with visual, hearing,
cognitive and motor impairments.
Many Internet users can find websites difficult to use due to
the way they have been designed. We recognise that this is an important issue
and are making changes to ensure that the emapsite.com website is accessible in
accordance with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines.
We have strived to make this website adhere to priority 1 and
2 guidelines and in some cases priority 3 as specified by the Web Content
Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 and endorsed by the Royal National Institute for
the Blind.
All pages validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional and use
structured semantic markup and the
CSS has also been
validated.
We strive to obey the spirit of the UK Disability
Discrimination Act 1995 with respect to the provision of services online, as
required by the Disability Rights Commission. Changes to improve accessibility
are ongoing, but if you come across a page you find difficult to use please let
us know.
Accessibility Design
Many Internet users with disabilities find website difficult
or even impossible to use simply because of the way they are designed. This
website has been designed to be as accessible as possible and to be compatible
with the types of adaptive technology used by people with disabilities,
including screen readers. As such, visitors can control the size of the text.
The stylesheet uses relative font sizes and is written to
display pages correctly in most commonly used browsers. In early versions of
browsers and browsing devices that do not support stylesheets at all, the flow
of the content has been tested to ensure it entirely retains its sense.
Foreground and background colours contrast well throughout
the site, with the majority of content appearing black on white.
The site is free of frames and uses a cascading style sheet
for visual layout. Tables are used for tabular data, but we have avoided using
them to dictate the layout of a page wherever possible.
Links
External website links on the site will open a new browser
window and most links have title attributes, which describe the link in greater
detail, and in the majority of cases the text of the link already fully
describes the target. Wherever possible, links are written to make sense out of
context.
Link text is never duplicated. Two links on the same page
with the same link text always point to the same address. External links on the
site will open a new browser window (when the link target is on a non-emapsite
site).
Images
All content images on the site include descriptive
ALT attributes.
Those purely decorative graphics or used for layout include empty
ALT attributes.
PDFs
Most documents on this website are PDFs (portable document
format). The advantage of a PDF is that it will always be presented
consistently. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open PDF files, and this can
be downloaded for free. Adobe has recently updated its free reader to include
screenreading functionality.
Adobe also has a free online conversion tool for pdfs so
people who have problems reading PDFs can convert them so that they appear as
normal web pages or plain text.
Multimedia (Video and Audio)
We host a number of video clips on the site and these clips
are provided in Flash Video Format which are suitable for a variety of different
connection types and speeds. You will need to ensure you have Flash Player
installed to view. What we have not done, owing to cost implications, is to
provide transcripts of each of the video clips.
JavaScript
The site has been configured to allow users access to its
full range of functionality whether or not they have JavaScript enabled in their
browsers. Where JavaScript is used, it is only used to enhance the user
experience. It is never essential.
Known browser support
This website operates on a wide range of browsers.
PC operating systems:
- Internet Explorer 8
- Internet Explorer 7
- Internet Explorer 6
- Internet Explorer 5.5
- Mozilla Firefox (all major versions)
- Google Chrome (all major versions)
- Netscape Navigator 7.0
- Opera 9.01
- Lynx
Apple Macintosh operating systems:
- Safari 2,3,4
- Mozilla Firefox (all major versions)
- Google Chrome (all major versions)
- Opera 9.01
- Netscape Navigator (all major versions)
Screen Readers: