Accessible Design

As of October 2004, the DDA will come into full force - opening up the legal responsibility for Public Services online to be accessible (more details).

Jadu Limited has made it company policy to design only to accepted web standards for usability and accessibility.

The power of CSS

By using CSS as the core driver for layout and design, pages are fully accessible and well-formed on all standard web browsing media.

Using the seperation of content from layout, CSS creates 100% of the design rules for Jadu website layout, image placement and use of colour.

Because all design rules are defined by a single, standards compliant cascading style sheet, making changes to fundamental design templates is a simple task that effects change globally.

In addition, Jadu style sheets are fully integrated into the WYSIWYG Document Editor, so font changes, headings, rollover colours can all be changed during content creation - whilst maintaining the general styling of the website.

Jadu uses no javascript

Jadu websites do not use any Javascript for functionality on customer facing areas. This ensures full accessability for all platforms and browsers, and for all users who do not use Javascript.

Wherever Javascript is required, we ensure that there is an alternative available as default.

Text only and other accessibility tools

All Jadu websites feature a text only option, for users reading the site with audio browsers or text only browsers. All pages are well - formed to ensure that content is presented in a concise and logical format.

Access Keys are also used, for users wishing to access main navagation via the keyboard.

XHTML valid

Future-proofing is essential for a mission critical government system. That's why Jadu outputs valid XHTML code, to ensure that web interfaces are interoperable and usable now and in the future.

We ensure that all pages validate to the W3C's XHTML standards. This means that pages are designed using strict web standards and without sacrificing visual asthetics.

All Jadu front end websites are developed using CSS to the full - and designed to be XHTML valid. The Jadu Document Editor also outputs valid, XHTML compliant code.

• Read the latest 'A List Apart' view on XHTML - written by leading usability expert, Jeffrey Zeldman
• The benefits of XHTML/XML
• Web accesability and UK Law (DDA)

*The statistic of 8.5 Million from disability.gov.uk