Part III of the UK Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (the "DDA") requires service providers to make reasonable adjustments in relation to the physical features of their premises in order to overcome physical barriers to access. These requirements extend to websites. In accordance with the DDA, the Website is designed so that all the contents are accessible to the largest possible number of users, regardless of their disabilities and of the technical characteristics of any devices used for accessing websites (e.g. narrow band internet connection, old versions of browsers, small monitors, etc).

The accessibility policy of this Website is based on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) accessibility recommendations defined within the framework of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). In designing this Website we referred to the W3C guidelines on web contents published on May, 5th 1999 (WCAG 1.0).

In particular all the pages on this Website comply with the following requirements:
W3C XHTML 1.0 Strict
W3C CSS 2
WAI-AA WCAG 1.0

The only page that is based on javascripts, due to the high interactivity level, is the assistive technology product advanced search page. This page may not operate correctly if your screenreader device does not support javascript.

The standard adopted

All the pages on the Website comply with the W3C XHTML 1.0 Strict standard and make a large use of the CSS2 style sheets, thus obtaining a distinct separation between the content and the graphic representation of the pages on the Website. The reason behind this is twofold: (1) it avoids a static pagination, through the use of resizable pages (e.g. if a window is resized the content is adapted to the new size of the window), and (2) it noticeably reduces the time needed to update the pagination.

The use of tables to format pages has been avoided wherever possible (generally they are only used for the visualization of data within tables).

The advantages of this include a) a faster loading of the pages on the Website; b) the possibility to resize the window (the content flows without the need for scroll bars); and c) the ability to enlarge or reduce the text size (with internet explorer you can open the menu view>character and change the size).


Access-key: surf with your keyboard

For easier access to the Website’s content with the keyboard you can use the accesskeys, which are a combination of the ALT key and a letter or number. With internet explorer the enter key confirms the command.
On Apple Macintosh computers the "apple key" should be used instead of the ALT key.
Opera users can consult the support page for the keyboard shortcuts (press ALT+B) to ascertain the shortcuts for this browser.

ALT+0 (Searches): Enables you to search for information about products, their suppliers and how they can be used from all the EASTIN partners;
ALT+1 (Help)
ALT+2 (New product alert): Enables manufacturers and suppliers to provide details of their assistive technology products that they wish to see included in one or more of the EASTIN partners' databases;
ALT+3 (Info request): Allows you to ask for information from an EASTIN partner;
ALT+4 (The project): Permits you to find out more about the EASTIN project;
ALT+5 (About us): Sets out the organisations that contribute data to EASTIN;
ALT+6 (Documents): Provides documents that you can download to your computer;
ALT+7 (Restricted area): Is a private area for the use of the EASTIN partners;
ALT+8 (Disclaimer): Disclaimer; and
ALT+9 (Accessibility): Gives information about the Website’s accessibility.


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