Accessibility Statement
UTL UK Web Accessibility
UTL strives to and prides itself on creating highly accessible and usable web solutions. This website is designed not only to be in accordance with W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG v1.0) and the UK Disability and Discrimination Act (DDA), but specifically to maximise user experience for people with disability.
Accessibity design, not just compliance
Although we use online tools to validate our sites, it is not our primary source for making our sites accessible. Sites that use "tick and flick" validation to pass guidelines may still not be usable by people with disability. Instead, we design our sites from conception to be accessible and usable, so that they will by nature pass any guidelines and validation tools.
Pages are specifically designed to be highly readable and usable with syles and images turned off. This would allow maximised readability by screen readers and improved flexibility for current and future browser technologies.
Standards compliance
- All pages on this site are approved by Watchfire and Cynthia Says™ for WCAG 1.0 Priority 1, 3 and 3 (AAA) guidelines and US Government Section 508 guidelines. We are aware that some WCAG checkpoints are subjective, but we believe we have met them the best we can.
- All pages on this site are validated XHTML 1.1. Though not strictly required for accessibility, this provides a strong foundation for creating highly usable sites.
- CSS and HTML best practices are used throughout the site. Examples include pure-CSS layout (opposed to using table layout which is not accessible) and proper and structured use of heading and markup tags. This is to maximise our target audience with different technologies.
Access Keys
Access keys have not been implemented for this site. The need for these have been made redundant by modern screen readers, and keyboard short-cuts relies heavily on the user's memory. The up-coming WCAG v2.0 guidelines do not have a requirement for implementing access keys. Instead, we have designed the navigation to be quickly and easily accessible.
Help us improve
We are committed to continually improving our levels of accessibility and finding new ways to present web sites which create the best possible user experience for people with disability. If you have found any difficulty in using this site, or have any suggestions on how to improve the site, please email us