W3C ACCESSIBILITY GUIDELINES

Devizes Town Council is striving to comply with all of the Priority 1 accessibility standards in its website, as established in the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) web accessibility initiative (WAI). The WAI promotes a high degree of usability and accessibility for people with disabilities. The W3C promotes good practice amongst the web community via initiatives like WAI (http://www.w3.org/WAI/) Web Contact Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.)

It is possible that some of our older pages might not currently conform to these standards. However, we are working towards ensuring that all future web pages are compliant with W3C guidelines for accessibility.

The W3C

The W3C is the "World Wide Web Consortium". They have provided specifications & guidelines for how websites should be coded since 1994. One of the goals of this organisation is to help establish standardized coding so that all websites will look and work the same on all browsers. One area of paramount concern is the area of website accessibility for people who have limited access to technology and/or reduced mobility, standard body functions or cognitive skills due to disability. The "Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)" was created as a team within the W3C to address this issue.

The Guidelines

The "Accessibility Guidelines" are a set of ever-evolving draft rules that have been established to ensure that websites are coded in such a way as to make the content available to all users, including those with technological limitations, or physical or mental disabilities.

The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA)

Recent changes in legislation in the UK regarding the Disability Discrimination Act mean that organisations are now required by law to develop their websites to the W3C Accessibility standard. Devizes Town Council is endeavouring to work towards these standards where ever possible. However, this process does take some time. So far we have achieved the following levels of compliance.