Accessibility Statement

Access keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

All pages on this site define the following access keys:

• Access key 1 - Home page
• Access key 3 - Site Index
• Access key 8 - Fairfax Digital conditions of use
• Access key 9 - Contact us
• Access key 0 - Accessibility statement

Standards compliance

1. All pages on this site are XHTML 1.0 Transitional. However due to advertising content and certain third party coding these pages will not validate. We aim to have all pages validated as soon as possible.
2. All pages on this site created after 31st April 2004 use structured semantic markup. H2 tags are used for main titles, H3 tags for subtitles. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+3.

Navigation aids

1. All pages ( published after 12th August 2004) have home links to aid navigation in text-only browsers. Netscape 7 and Mozilla users can also take advantage of this feature by selecting the View menu, Show/Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always).
2. The home page and all other pages (published after 12th August 2004) include a search box (access key 4).

Links

1. Many links have title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target (such as the headline of an article).
2. Links are written to make sense out of context.

Images

1. Most content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes.
2. Complex images include LONGDESC attributes or inline descriptions to explain the significance of each image to non-visual readers.

Visual design

1. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.
2. This site uses relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.
3. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility references

1. W3 accessibility guidelines, which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
2. W3 accessibility techniques, which explains how to implement each guideline.
3. W3 accessibility checklist, a busy developer's guide to accessibility.

Accessibility software

1. JAWS, a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited, downloadable demo is available.
2. Home Page Reader, a screen reader for Windows. A downloadable demo is available.
3. Lynx, a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
4. Links, a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.
5. Opera, a visual browser with many accessibility-related features, including text zooming, user stylesheets, image toggle. A free downloadable version is available. Compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and several other operating systems.

Accessibility services

1. Bobby, a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines. A full-featured commercial version is also available.
2. HTML Validator, a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
3. Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
4. Lynx Viewer, a free service for viewing what your web pages would look like in Lynx.

Related resources

1. WebAIM, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving accessibility to online learning materials.