Accessibility

At the BES, we are committed to making our website accessible to all users. We strive to comply with the highest standards of accessibility possible in accordance with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

We welcome feedback from users who experience any difficulty navigating the BES website or gaining access to information. Please email us with your helpful comments.

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the website. Windows users, you can press ALT + an access key. Mozilla Firefox users, you can press Alt + Shift + an access key. Macintosh users, you can press Control + an access key.

All pages on this site define the following access keys which are those adopted as U.K. Government Standards:

  • Access key 1 - Home page
  • Access key 3 - Site map
  • Access key 4 - Search site
  • Access key 0 - Accessibility statement
  • Access key s - Skip to main navigation
  • Access key m - Skip to main content

 

Navigation aids

  1. All pages include a search box (access key 4). Advanced search options are available by following the link on the search return page.
  2. There is a site map which allows quick access to all site pages (access key 3)
  3. Those using screen readers are able to skip to main navigation links (accesskey s) OR skip to main page content (access key m)
  4. All pages on this site use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for the page title, H2 tags for main headings within the document and H3 tags for sub headings.

Links

  1. Where necessary, links have a title attribute which describes the target in greater detail.
  2. Links are written to make sense when read out of context.

Visual design

  1. This site uses cascading style sheets (CSS) for visual layout.
  2. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets or stylesheets are switched off, the content of each page is still readable and the site fully navigable.
  3. This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.

Standards compliance

  1. All pages on this site comply with Priority Level 1 / Priority Level 2 of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This is a judgement call; many of the guidelines are intentionally vague. They require a subjective assessment and cannot be tested using any of the third party automatic validators. We have reviewed the guidelines and believe that all pages comply.
  2. All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
  3. All cascading style sheets (CSS) validate using the W3C CSS Validator.

Accessibility references

W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/

W3C accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10-TECHS

W3C accessibility checklist, a developer's guide to accessibility.
www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/full-checklist.html

Further information

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