This page lists the features used to facilitate the accessibility, compatibility and interoperability of the content of RailwaysArchive.co.uk. If you have a question regarding accessibility, compatibility or interoperability that is not answered here please use our email form.

Web Standards for Accessibility
RailwaysArchive.co.uk has been built to adhere to Accessibility Guidelines.

Visual Presentation
Font sizes are defined relatively, which means that they are determined by the user's preferences. All text can be resized using the browser's mechanism (View»Text Size / View»Text Zoom / View»Zoom).

A web standards compliant visual browser, such as Mozilla Firefox, will display the pages as they are intended. However, all the content of the site is accessible using any browser or Internet device.

Access Keys and Alternative Navigation
Most web browsers support jumping to specific links through the use of keyboard shortcuts that can be defined on the Web site. In Windows, you can press ALT + an access key (if you are using Internet Explorer, press Return to follow the link); on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

Access keys are defined because not all users are able to use a mouse, and several alternative browsing devices do not employ a `point and click' interface.

In line with the Guidelines for UK Government Websites produced by the Office of the e-Envoy, the site defines the following access keys:

access key 1 (ALT+1) - home page
access key 2 (ALT+2) - view the archive
access key 3 (ALT+3) - search the archive
access key 4 (ALT+4) - frequently asked questions
access key 0 (ALT+0) - accessibility statement (this page)

Document Structure
The content of each page is contained in structural XHTML and uses consistent semantic markup. For example, emphasis is added using the meaningful 'em' and 'strong' tags, rather than the deprecated 'i' (italics) and 'b' (bold) tags, which are merely visual.

Logically ordered documents make sense when read (by text-only browsers for instance) in a linear fashion. Markup structured in this way has the advantage of providing some web devices with a quick summary of the content of a page, by listing titles, headings and links, for example. Structural tags provide alternative browsers (especially screen readers) with the opportunity to add meaning to the content of a page. Using structural markup also improves automated searching, both within the site and by search engines.

Links
Wherever possible, link text is written to make sense when taken out of context. This means that use of text such as 'click here' or 'more' for the hypertext links have been kept to a minimum. Browsing devices that can extract a list of links from a page will therefore render meaningful content.

Images
All images used on the site have alt attributes to provide alternative text that will appear in browsers that do not support images. All images have been optimised for the smallest file size, to ensure that users accessing the site via modem are not inconvenienced by long download times.

Forms
Interactive forms on the site (such as those used by the search facility) make use of several features to improve accessibility. These include:

Labelling of form elements; the 'label' tag allows text to be associated with a particular form field, assisting screen readers to intelligently announce what a particular input element is by reading the label.

Logical ordering of elements; form elements are ordered in a consistent and logical manner to ensure that users who are navigating without the aid of a mouse are able to move easily between form elements in the order in which they are presented.