Accessibility

What is an accessible website?

Accessible websites prioritise clear content, structure and ease of navigation over frilly aspects of design, however they also need not be visually unattractive, nor are they prevented from using the latest web technologies, provided that all information is still accessible to all users.

City of Leeds Swimming Club recognises the need for this website to be accessible to all. We have implemented a number of features to make this website easy to use, especially for users with disabilities.

Please contact us if you have questions or feedback regarding the accessibility of this site, or if you have difficulty using it.

Browsers

This website is built to HTML 4.01 and CSS 1.0 / 2.0 standards.
This website will function and look as intended in browsers that support these standards. The most common of these are:

It is strongly recommended that you use one of the above browsers for the best and most secure experience, not only on this website but the internet as a whole.

Internet Explorer 6 users should be aware that this is an 8 year old product and should upgrade to a later version.

Accessibility features on this website

The following features improve navigation for text only browsers, screen reader users, and users of keyboard navigation.

Style sheets

This site uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for visual layout. If your browser supports it, stylesheets can be disabled or over-ridden to customise the appearance of the website, to your preference.

Font sizes

You can change the font size of each page to your preference through the browser.

Tables

Tables are used to display tabular data. Tables are not used for general site layout. This means our tables are being used in a correct and meaningful manner.

Colours

The site has been designed to be easy to read through its colour combinations. If you have any difficulty in reading parts of the site please contact us.

Scripting

JavaScript is used on the site to improve usability. All pages and processes are still accessible and usable if JavaScript is disabled or unavailable.

Links

We have worked hard to ensure that our links are meaningful, even when read out of context.

External Links

We no longer open external links in a new window. While this is often seen as the more logical and accessible way of providing links to external sites, recent research - supported by the W3C - has shown opening extra windows for new content can actually be more disorientating.

As a result, we have taken the decision to open external links in the same window - although all links will clearly be marked as external.

Viewing PDF Documents

We use the industry standard PDF format to deliver many of our electronic documents online. If you do not already have it installed you will need to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software.

Standards compliance

Our pages aim to conform to Level A compliance as specified by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This standard is endorsed by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB) and the Disability Rights Commission (http://www.drc-gb.org/).

Our pages use valid HTML and CSS. To ensure code quality and that standards are maintained we are committed to checking this on a regular basis.

Policy

Our focus is on making the user experience for all users (of varying levels of ability) a practical and easy one - this can at times mean considering not only the technical coding standards, but also the rational information and process flows within the site, and can on occasion require deviation from published standards. Our policy, wherever feasible, is to offer the same functionality and experience to all users, and avoid the need for a 'text only' version of the site.