Accessibility

Level A & AA accessibility level

West Oxfordshire District Council is committed to accessibility and ensuring that its online information and services are accessible to all. This site conforms to the Double A level of the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Guidelines 1.0 and works with all browsers on all platforms which helps to make the website more accessible to visitors with disabilities and benefits all visitors. Every effort is made to ensure the whole site conforms to all the standards but, with numerous contributors, there may be a few pages that don't fully conform.

If you have any problem accessing any information on the site, please contact us using the report a problem with our website online form and we will attempt to resolve the problem.

We have designed our web site to include the following accessibility features:

Access keys

Access Keys have been set up to allow visitors to navigate around the website's main pages using the keyboard instead of the mouse. To use these Access keys:

Press and hold the 'Alt' key on a Windows PC or the 'Control' key on a Macintosh computer
Press the required letter or number
Press the return key

1 Back to Home Page

3 Site index

4 Search the site

5 A - Z of services

6 Help

7 Complaints procedure ('Contacting the Council' page)

8 Disclaimer

9 Contact us - Feedback form

0 Access keys details

S Skip navigation

The Tab key can also be used to navigate through each page on the website in a logical order.

Resizable text

All the text in this website can be resized so that visitors can use their browser to set a text size that is comfortable for them. In Microsoft Internet Explorer select Text Size from the View menu and select one of the text sizes from the list. You can also change the size of the text by holding down the Ctrl key and using the scroll wheel on the mouse to increase or decrease the size of the text.

Thunder is screen reader talking software for people with little or no sight and can be downloaded for free. It works with Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 7 and Vista. For further information and to download the software see the:

Thunder screenreader website

Please note that the council is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Text only version

Visitors can view a text only version of the website which removes the graphics so it loads more quickly and is compatible with Screen reader software for people with visual impairments.

Skip navigation

At the top of the Text only version is the Skip Navigation option which automatically moves you over the header and menu to the main body of the page.

Images and Alt tags

All images on the website have alternative labels or 'Alt' tags which are text descriptions of the image so you still know what the image is even if you viewing the text only version of the website or you are using a screen reader to browse the webpage.

Consistent navigation

The navigation throughout the website is consistent. The Site Directory, My West Oxfordshire and the Publications Listing are available on the left hand side of every page and the A to Z, Site Map, Accessibility, Contact us and Search are available from the top of every page. The 6 main areas of the website are available from all the pages.

As well as finding pages via the standard navigation visitors should also be able to find them using the Search or Site Directory pages.

If you have any feedback or comments about the navigation or any aspect of the website, please complete a website feedback form.

Internal and external web page links

Most of the links to other pages in the website, pdf documents and external web sites include an appropriate description of where the link leads so it can be read out by screen reader software.

Adobe and PDF file downloads

As much information as possible is presented on the website. Where a there's a lot of information it is presented in an Adobe Portable Document Format or PDF file. Adobe Acrobat Reader is free software which allows you to view and print Adobe PDF files and can be downloaded from Adobe's website. The latest versions of Adobe Reader support accessibility features such as keyboard shortcuts, support for screen readers and Braille output. Please see this part of Adobe's website for further information.