Accessibility

As this site develops the web team will make every effort to ensure that the design conforms to the highest web standards for both usability and accessibility.

We aim to achieve WAI-AAA (currently the highest level of accessibility).

Access Keys

Access keys have been chosen to fit in with recommendations found on the web.

More details about the keys for this site can be found on the 'Access Keys' page.

Adobe Acrobat

SBC internet guidelines recommends that the use of Adobe Acrobat PDF files be kept to a minimum. PDF files are intended only for documents that need to be printed (for example - application forms).

These documents are created by:

Adobe Acrobat Version 6 - which has built in accessibility features,
the 'Accessibility Plug-in' with Adobe Acrobat version 5.

For further details on Acrobat, PDF Files and accessibility please visit Access Adobe.

Forms and E-Mail

We have replaced the use of e-mail contact details with online forms. There are several benefits by doing this :

most importantly, users without e-mail capabilities will be able to contact the council - these could be people using the computers at libraries, schools or colleges, behind a firewall or at an internet cafe,
to defeat e-mail address harvesters - tools that collect e-mail addresses for spammers - and reduce spam,
to reduce the amount of personal e-mail addresses in documents - if that person is not available (on vacation, or no longer in that post) they won't be able to reply.

ICRA

The SBC web site has been submitted to ICRA, "an international, independent organization that empowers the public, especially parents, to make informed decisions about electronic media by means of the open and objective labeling of content."

This allows both users and software (such as Net Nanny) to rate the content of our site in terms of suitability.

Plain English

It is an aim of SBC that as many documents and publications as possible meet the standards raised by The Plain English Campaign. Each department is responsible for training staff, and sending its documents to be rated. As a result the 'Crystal Mark' is appearing on more and more of SBC's documents.

These aims and skills are being used when writing for the web.