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Accessibility

The site was built to comply with internationally accepted web standards in order to make it accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of browsing software.

At present there is no intention to convert previously published pages (with the dark blue background) into the new design and format. Pages will be converted to the new design as and when the information displayed on the page needs to be updated.

All the old blue pages will continue to be available, however, the accessibility statement below may not be applicable.

If you have any questions regarding the site please let us know.

Valid XHTML, CSS and RSS

All pages are written in valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional and are styled using valid CSS 1.0 code. We validate our pages regularly to ensure this standard is maintained.

The RSS news feed is written in valid RSS.

Browser compatibility

We test our pages to ensure the information they contain is accessible in a range of different browsers. By adhering to web standards we avoid the use of features specific to one browser.

We do, however, recommend you use the latest version of your browser software. Not only will this ensure the site functions fully, as it was intended, but the latest software versions and updates provide a more secure browsing experience.

There are a number of Adobe PDF files on this site. Download the free Abobe PDF Reader from the Adobe site.

If you experience problems whilst accessing the site, please let us know.

Navigation Aids

We have incorporated the following features into the University site to help you find your way around:

Site Map

If you are having any trouble locating the information you are looking for, a full index of the site is available via the help pages, accessible via the dark blue menu bar at the top of every page.

Breadcrumb trail

We provide a breadcrumb trail feature above the main content of each page to show you the path from the home page to where you are in the site.

Links

We try to ensure all our link text is written to make sense out of context.

We have used title attributes where appropriate to give further information about the target of a link.

Access Keys

Due to the current lack of a consistent standard for the implementation of access keys, and the resulting unreliability in the way they work, we have decided at this stage not to include them on our pages. We do however feel that they are a useful idea in principle, so we will monitor developments on this issue and hope that in due course a standard will be agreed within the Web community, at which point we will be willing to adopt it. In the meantime we will be happy to hear any views you may have on this subject.

Presentation

We use stylesheets for visual layout combined with structured markup of headings, paragraphs and lists to separate content from presentation.

The content of our pages is still readable if stylesheets are turned off or unavailable.

We have used relative font sizes on our pages to ensure text is resizeable in visual browsers. See instructions for how to resize text.

If you have any questions regarding the site's accessibilty or experience problems whilst accessing the site, please let us know. We can only continue to improve the site with your feedback.