Accessibility Policy

WaterBear is committed to ensuring that our website is accessible, regardless of ability or access to technology. This policy sets out how we've made the WaterBear website compliant and user-friendly.

Accessibility standards

This website conforms to level AA website accessibility standards of The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

Layout

This site uses Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to manage page layouts, which means pages are well structured and compatible with most assistive technologies.

Images

Unless they are purely for decorative reasons, graphics and images on our website have alternative text, which describe the contents or function of what is displayed on screen.

Links

Links in sentences are underlined. Links open in the same window unless otherwise stated.

Downloads

WaterBear publications and our other downloadable materials are available as Adobe PDF files. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to access them, which you can download for free from the Adobe website.

Text

All text is written as clearly as possible using language appropriate to the content

The fonts we use are designed to be easy to read

We have ensured that line lengths and the space between lines are set to offer an easy reading experience

We provide headings and sub headings to show the structure of a page and to aid screen readers

You can resize text using your browser settings

Colour contrast

The colours on our site have been chosen so they provide enough contrast to allow users who are visually impaired or colour blind to easily read the content.

Navigation aids

Navigation aids are consistent throughout the site

You can return to the homepage at any time by clicking on our logo in the top left-hand corner of the page

Where you are in any given section of the website is shown at the top of the page

For those using screen readers, we have included links that enable main page navigation to be skipped. These are known as 'skip links'

Videos

Videos are embedded from other sources, such as YouTube and Vimeo. These have not been set to play automatically on the WaterBear website.

Forms

The fields in forms are clearly labelled, and errors in forms are flagged before a form can be submitted.

Further help

If you have any difficulty using the WaterBear website, or any of our affiliated sites, please get in touch using our contact us page.