Welcome to the Visually Impaired Sailing Association

WEB page accessibility statement

Scope of this statement

This statement refers to the VI-SA-GB.org.uk website.
This statement does not yet apply to secondary or third party sites.
The next stage of our accessibility project is to ensure that all sites published in the last three years that the VI-SA-GB site links to, meet the requirements of this statement, and that all sites older than three years are brought as close as possible to being accessible.

Standards compliance

Our aim is to meet all priority 1 requirements of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0). Meeting this standard is commonly known as Level A compliance.
We also aim to meet as many priority 2 requirements of the WCAG 1.0 as possible. Meeting this standard is commonly known as Level AA compliance.
In commissioning new websites and maintaining the accessibility of existing sites, we aim to follow the best practice guidelines described in the British Standards Institution's Publicly Available Specification BS8878.

Current state of compliance

Level A compliance

We currently meet all but two of the Level A compliance checkpoints. These are:

Checkpoint 1.4 (synchronise captions with videos) - We are working to comply with this checkpoint. As of 31 December 2010 we have 1 video awaiting inclusion on the main site, unfortunately this video fails to meet this requirement. This video has neither transcripts nor synchronised captions. We intend to create transcripts for all videos, and ensure that all new videos are published with synchronised captions.
Checkpoint 4.1 (specify the language of all non-English words) - We do not intend to comply with this checkpoint at this stage. This is because in version 2.0 of the WCAG , this requirement has been reduced to priority 2.

Level AA compliance

We currently meet all but three of the Level AA compliance checkpoints. These are:

Checkpoint 2.2 (colour contrast) - We fail this checkpoint with some of our top navigation buttons, and are investigating what needs to be done to meet this requirement.
Checkpoint 3.2 (validate to W3C grammars) - Our search system does not validate to W3C standards (though the rest of the site should validate to HTML 1.0 Transitional). This is because we use Google search, and we do not have control over the format of the search results.
Checkpoint 10.1 (don't open new browser windows) - We do not intend to comply with this checkpoint at this stage. In version 2.0 of the WCAG , this requirement has been split into three separate checkpoints:
- 3.2.1
- 3.2.2
- 3.2.5
We currently meet the first two checkpoints, both of which are priority 1, and whilst we fail to meet the last checkpoint, it has been relegated to priority 3 in the new guidelines.

Maintaining accessibility standards

Once a section of the website has been made to meet the above accessibility standards, we continually review the site and modify pages to ensure they continue to be accessible. This review process includes, among others, the following processes:

Some WCAG 1.0 checkpoints - such as making sure pages validate to W3C web grammars - can be checked automatically. We run automatic checks regularly on the site to ensure compliance in these areas.
Our manual content management process is such to ensure that accessibility information has to be entered before content can be published. Furthermore, all pages have to be checked by members of the web team before they can be published, and part of this checking process is to ensure adherence to the WCAG 2.0 checkpoints.
New sections of the site will only be added once they meet the above standards.
We will continue to develop our in-house editorial guidelines to ensure we produce accessible content.
Once we have finished making our links to secondary and third party sites accessible, we will work with our disability access team to iron out any further issues.

Access keys

UK Government Access Keys Standard.
The access key attribute, introduced in HTML4.0, is intended to provide keyboard shortcuts in that they provide an alternative form of navigation. This addition allows disabled users to navigate the organisation's website more easily. There are however some drawbacks, for example:

functionality depends on the type of operating system you are using
the attribute is only supported by MS Internet Explorer 4 and above and by Netscape 6x versions
with Windows-based systems the user has to press the 'Alt key' and the access key, and with the Macintosh system the user has to press the 'Ctrl key' and the access key
design defined access keys may conflict with user defined access keys currently in use

Listed below for information only is the recommended UK Government Access Keys Standard.

S - Skip navigation
1 - Home page
2 - What's new
3 - Site map
4 - Search
5 - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
6 - Help
7 - Complaints procedure
8 - Terms and conditions
9 - Feedback form
0 - Access key details

Accessibility 1.0 utilises the UK Government Access Keys Standard. After much consideration, and because we endeavour to meet Accessibility 2.0 we removed access keys from the site because of interactivity issues and possible conflicts with access and adaptive technologies.

We support Skip to main content because the navigation is placed before the page content.

Feedback

If you have any questions or feedback about the accessibility of the VI-SA-GB website, we would like to hear from you.

You can contact the web team by completing the following ticket:-

This form sends an e-mail to VI-SA-GB.

All information provided and presented by the association is protected by copyright © and other intellectual property laws. You may not reproduce, copy or transmit, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the association.