Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service Website Accessibility
Policy
Merseyside Fire & Rescue Service’s aim is to make its
external website and its internal intranet accessible to all users.
We will follow best practice standards and guidelines to ensure
that our sites are accessible.
Disabled Users
MF&RS aims to develop our website to meet the World Wide Web
Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative’s 'Double-A'
standard This standard aims to improve the web experience for
users with a range of accessibility issues and will remove significant
barriers to accessing Web documents for these groups. In general
this level of accessibility ensures that:
- Movement or flickering/blinking content is eliminated. Scrolling
news tickers and animating text content are difficult for screen
readers to interpret. Rapidly blinking content should be avoided
as it poses a risk to users with epilepsy.
- Web page structure conforms to the latest W3C standards using
style sheets, document type definitions and appropriate labelling
for elements to assist in the intelligibility of web documents
- Descriptive information is provided on site layout, links,
and frames (if used)
- Scripts and applets are input device-independent
- No use of frames throughout the entire website
- Use of alternative text descriptions (ALT text) to describe
the content of images
- Text only and change contrast areas of the website to provide
an alternative non-graphical way of finding your way around
the site. To be achieved through the use of CSS ( Cascading
Style Sheets)
- we will maintain a standard layout to help the user find their
way around the site and use plain backgrounds to improve the
readability of text
- All hyperlinks used will be descriptive.
- It will be possible to alter text size and background colours
- All video clips will be subtitled
In addition we will provide short video clips on line featuring
information delivered by British Sign Language
Multilingual Users
For users whose first language is not English we will include
an option to obtain information from our website in alternative
languages. Our Home page will include information about this option
with a telephone contact to obtain the required information in
hard copy or spoken translation.
Our Home page will state:
This is Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service Home page –
If you require any information in an alternative language, please
contact us on 0151 296 4000
This will be printed in English and the 5 main alternative languages
spoken on Merseyside: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French and Somali.
As an alternative option we will also signpost users to translation
software sites.
Older Users
MF&RS recognises that as people get older they may not have
access to the latest, highest specification, computer hardware
or software. In addition they may have difficulties accessing
the internet because of a range of age related disabilities. In
particular, we will ensure easy access for:
- People with a sensory impairment, which includes: Visual impairments and
Hearing impairments
- People with motor impairments, e.g. arthritis, which makes
it difficult to use a mouse or keyboard
- People with a learning disability who may find lengthy or
complicated sites difficult to use
- People without access
Younger Users
MF&RS provide a range of opportunities for children and young
people. We will have a dedicated area on our website for our Youth
Engagement activities.
Links
We will ensure that all links accessed from our website comply
with the W3C accessibility standards, or IRCA (The Internet Content
Rating Association) web standards.
IRCA is an international, non-profit organization of internet
leaders working to develop a safer internet.
Accessibility will be monitored by invited responses on a form
on the website and via consultation with users, including through
our Community Forum.
As part of our on-going commitment to achieving full website accessibility for all our site visitors. The MF&RS recommend the use of the latest web browsing software to enhance your user experience.
For your convenience we have highlighted some of the most popular, accessible friendly, free downloadable web browsers.
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Mozilla Firefox
Opera
Apple Safari
For playing video and audio files hosted on this site you may find the FREE Windows Media Player helpful, the latest version can be obtained here...
Windows Media Player
For viewing Adobe Acrobat PDF files on this site you should downlaod the FREE Adobe Acrobat reader, the latest version can be obtained here...
Adobe Acrobat Reader
You may find this FREE Firefox and Safri browser add-on useful for viewing some technical information which helps to make up our site...
Westciv's X-Ray tool