About this Website

Compliance

This website conforms to the W3C's XHTML Strict 1.0 Doctype and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (Level AAA). The website also validates against the W3C's CSS level 3 specification.

Progressive Enhancement

This website attempts to separate content from presentation to the highest degree possible. Users who have JavaScript disabled or are running an old or non css-enabled/compliant browser are still served the same content as users with all the bells and whistles. Markup is kept as clean and simple as possible which accommodates extensibility and allows much easier implementation of progressive enhancement.

Progressive enhancement differs from classic 'graceful degradation' in that its focused on starting with content, and applying separate layers to it (XHTML, CSS, JavaScript). Graceful degradation is focused on building the website for the newest and most popular browsers and only towards the end of development, older and less compatible browsers were accommodated to ensure the website still looked 'acceptable'.

The jQuery library is used extensively throughout the website to provide users with a fully Javascript enabled browser with a rich user experience. sIFR is also used to provide users with Flash to enjoy customised fonts.

Accessibility

The standards-based build of this website ensures maximum consistency across most browsers and platforms. The progressive enhancement method ensures that users without JavaScript will still be able to use every aspect of the website.

WCAG Accessibility rating (Level AAA) achieved throughout the website allows visually impaired users to navigate it with relative ease, using a screen reader or a similar accessibility tool.

All content text is styled with relative rather than absolute units to allow users to resize the font and improve readability without breaking the layout of the website.