RNIB's website has been designed with the needs of people with sight problems in mind, including those who use access technology to browse the internet. We have also taken on board international guidance and best practice on web accessibility.
We are committed to ensuring everyone can access our website. This includes people with sight problems, hearing, mobility and cognitive impairments as well as users with dial-up, older browsers or newer technologies such as mobiles and PDAs.
If you have any comments and or suggestions please don't hesitate to contact us about the site by emailing
webeditor@rnib.org.uk
How the website is built for accessibility
Layout
The site uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to control all of the presentation and layout. Screen reader users no longer have to listen to this information.
As a result, screen reader users can use the screen reader's navigation key to get around the site. If you are listening to the site, menus are grouped together in a more logical fashion. The navigation has been moved to appear after the content. Users can quickly use the jump to navigation link to get to that.
Content
The content has been written and formatted to make it accessible. For example:
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headings highlight sections of text
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sentences are short with the meaning at the beginning
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links use meaningful text
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forms can be navigated using the tab key.
Conformance statement
This website satisfies the RNIB Surf Right Guidelines for web accessibility. The checkpoints are taken from Website Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines, published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
For further information see the Site audits and Surf Right page
The site is tested regularly to ensure that standards are adhered to and maintained. The site has also undergone user testing by users with a range of disabilities including mobility, hearing and cognitive impairments as well as users with sight problems.
Before go live, we tested the site using the following browsers:
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Mac OSX
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Safari 2, 3 and 4
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Firefox 2 and 3
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Opera 8 and 9
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Win XP
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IE 6
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IE 7
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IE 8.
Surf Right
RNIB's take on web accessibility has been summarised in the Surf Right standard. This is the result of an intensive work of research aimed to address the most important challenges faced by disabled people.
Most of the guidance and requirements that need to be met to reach the Surf Right standard are based on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) recommendations. The Surf Right standard is aligned to the WAI
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) (published in December 2008).
Main differences with WCAG 2.0
There are some differences in the organisation of guidelines and conformance requirements between Surf Right and WCAG 2.0. Surf Right is similar to WCAG 2.0 Double-A guidance, with the following main differences:
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Exclusion of WCAG Double-A requirements: Surf Right does not require two of the more technically challenging WCAG 2.0 Double-A requirements where practical alternatives can be provided.
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Inclusion of WCAG 2.0 Triple-A requirements: Surf Right includes some of the higher level requirements of WCAG 2.0, where our experience shows that they are both valid and important to disabled users.
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Reliance on client-side script: WCAG 2.0 allows reliance on accessibility supported JavaScript or other client-side script. Surf Right requires that an alternative mechanism is provided for core or important information and functionality.
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Additional requirements: Surf Right requires the use or avoidance of some techniques where experience has proved that to do so would significantly improve accessibility. Currently these techniques (called Surf Right Best Practice requirements) aren't specifically mentioned in WCAG 2.0 sufficient techniques or failures.
Further information
For more details about Surf Right and RNIB's work with web accessibility, visit our
Web Access Centre.
You can download our Surf Right documents from our
Web Access Centre download area.
Read
background information about web accessibility.
Report websites with accessibility issues to
Fix the Web.