Information Centre
-Accessibility and Compatibility
Definitions
1. When referring to 'sites', 'website' or 'websites'...
we are referring to one or all of the following websites countyfetes.co.uk, summerfetes.co.uk, villagefetes.co.uk, cateringads.co.uk, wholesalerads.co.uk, flexyourplastic.co.uk and livingwithnature.co.uk
2. When referring to 'Villagefetes'... we are referring to the business that owns the websites above (1).
What is Web Accessibility?
Put simply web accessibility refers to the practice of creating websites that are usable by people of all abilities and importantly those with disabilities on a wide range of devices from mobile phones to desktop computers.
Our Accessibility Policy
We are fully committed as an online business to making all of our websites fully accessible to as wide an audience as practically possible. We support many of the principles put together by The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) produced by the World Wide Web Consortium, and will continue to design new content and improve older content to comply with many of those recommended guidelines.
With that said, complying to new standards comes at a price and with people using a multitude of mobile and desktop devices using old and new web browsers it's becoming increasingly difficult and resource intensive to create backward compatible websites, particularly for pre 2011 browsers.
HTTPS Encryption and Data Security
The secure transfer of user data to and from our websites and servers is taken
very seriously at Villagefetes and as a result upgrading all our websites to
HTTPS was made priority back in 2016. However due to the lack of backward
handling on modern servers to non HTTPS capable web browsers, this upgrade in
itself has forced us to abandon the practice of ensuring accessibility to all
pre 2011 browsers particularly those running on Windows XP or older OS's. The
introduction of using site wide encryption has also meant that sending a
referring URL from our sites to non secure domains has impacted those monitoring click thru
stats, although we have put in place a temporary fix, as the internet moves over to full encryption
the problem will be
self fixing with passing time.
Older Web Browsers
Although many of our website pages may still currently view well in some older web browsers
(pre 2011), we can confidently predict that over the next few years the current accessibility for users with very old browsers will disappear
completely. Given the design limitations and resources required in creating backward compatible content, as from 2016
Villagefetes accessibility policy is that we will only check content for full accessibility
and compatibility in the current and two previous versions of any one particular
browser. However most of our websites will continue to work in pre 2016 browsers
with only a small amount of features and appearance downgrades along with a loss
of mobile responsiveness.
Browsing and Security Improvements
We regularly check all our websites for accessibility in the recent versions of
popular web browsers but to make the most of our new website features and to improve your security online we
always recommend that you update to the latest version of your chosen web browser
and OS (operating system). However that's not always practical nor affordable,
so if you still use an OS and browser after the end of support ensure you have the
final version with all available updates, we would suggest that Firefox and
Google Chrome are less problematic at handling modern websites than Microsoft®
Internet Explorer.
Ongoing Accessibility Improvements
Improvements to accessibility and the overall design to all of our websites is a continuous ongoing working process. Since 2016 we have made many important accessibility improvements to many key areas and the design layout of all our websites, these mainly include:
Mobile Responsiveness, our continuing focus has been the process of moving to a
fully mobile responsive website design that will be viewable across all devices.
However given the size and complexity of our sites we hope to be fully mobile
responsive by the end of 2020. Tables, we have minimised their usage where possible and are now used for laying out tabular information
only.
Images used for visual presentation have self explanatory alternative and title text (so if you've turned off images or you can't see the image you can still understand what it contains or where it links to). JavaScript's are used in moderation and users accessibility is not restricted when scripting is unavailable or has been disabled by the user. Cascading Style Sheets
(CSS) used for layout and visual presentation conform to the W3C specifications and will allow content to be available to a wider selection of mobile devices and readers.
HTML Emails and Newsletters
All our emails and newsletters are designed with the same principals as set out above, to be accessible and readable by as wide an audience as practically possible on as many email client
programs or email readers. HTML emails (not plain text) layouts are still tables based and have not moved forward much over the past years (in terms of standards) unlike standards based web pages. Problems in viewing visually appealing HTML emails usually arise through the limitations of the various email software and the "auto turn off" of images.
Email Client or Reader Compatibility
All our HTML email and newsletters are regularly checked for compatibility using the online platform "Email on Acid" and though manual design compatibility checking
using the following guide that can be downloaded and viewed by clicking on the following
link Campaign Monitor CSS Support
More Information
If you have any comments or experience any difficulty or problem viewing
either the website, content or our email newsletters please
contact us with
details of the software and version being used, your operating system, your screen resolution
settings, your device and model plus a good description of the problem with the address of the webpage causing the
problem.