Accessibility

Our efforts to ensure our website is Accessible to all

The Central Herts YMCA website has been designed very much with accessibility issues in mind, our aim being to ensure that all our users can view what we have to offer, regardless of differing abilities or technologies used to access it.

Cross browser compatibility

Our website has been tested for compatibility with the following browsers : Internet Explorer for Windows v 5.x & v. 6.0, Mozilla Firefox for Windows (v 1.0); Mozilla Firefox for Macintosh (v 1.0); Netscape for Windows (v 7.02), Internet Explorer for Macintosh (v 5.0).

Although some of the above mentioned browsers may display things slightly differently from one another, these changes are merely cosmetic and will not hinder the usability in any way.

Accessibility Laws

Our website has been tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and we are confident that it meets at least the minimum requirements (Priority 1) as well as the majority of Priority 2 & 3.

Using the website without a mouse

Mouseless visitors will find that they can navigate between pages by using the TAB key on their keyboard.

Specific tab indexing has been employed (where necessary) on all pages in order to provide a logical route through the menu links. Menu links can be followed by hitting the ENTER key on the keyboard.

Additionally, 'access keys' have been assigned (on all pages) to important sections of the site. These keys (supported by most modern browsers) provide quick access to important areas.

To access any of these specific pages, visitors with Windows-based browsers (such as later versions of Internet Explorer for Windows) should be able to hit the relevant letter or number (as indicated below) on their keyboard whilst holding down their ALT key (in some cases, this action may have to be followed by the ENTER key). Macintosh users should find that holding down the CONTROL key on their keyboards whilst pressing one of the access keys listed below will produce the same effect.

ALT or CONTROL + h - Home page
ALT or CONTROL + a - Accessibility statement (this page)

ALT or CONTROL + 1 - Nursery Section
ALT or CONTROL + 2 - Newsletter Section
ALT or CONTROL + 3 - Staff Section
ALT or CONTROL + 4 - Housing Section
ALT or CONTROL + 5 - IT Suite Section
ALT or CONTROL + 6 - After School Groups Section
ALT or CONTROL + 7 - Job Opportunities Section
ALT or CONTROL + 8 - Contact details page

From 9 onwards, these will represent the Sub page areas of each Section

Scripts and Plugins

The use of client-side scripts in this site (e.g. Javascript) has been kept to an absolute minimum, therefore any users who have scripting capabilities disabled will still be able to access our website without any problems whatsoever.

Images

All images used on this site have ALT tags in order to provide an appropriate description of the image (or function behind it, in the case of images used as links), again, for those visitors with visibility difficulties or have graphics switched off on their browsers.

Page Layouts, Text and other Styles

The overall layout for pages on this site is created in valid XHTML and uses DIVs rather that tables to control positioning of elements.

External CSS stylesheets are used to control the overall layout of the page and the text styles throughout, including colouring and positioning.If stylesheets are disabled in the browser, pages are still readable and fully functional.

All pages are 'in-line', no 'pop-up' windows are ever spawned, and any further windows are only opened on user request.