Staffordshire Police

It's important for us that as many people as possible can benefit from the services on our website.

This site has undergoing rigorous web accessibility testing by the Shaw Trust. Designed to be the most comprehensive web accessibility audit available, and endoresed by the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS), we can be confident that this site will meet the highest standards possible accessibility standards in line with Web Content Authoring Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG). 

Speech enable our website with Browsealoud

This website is speech enabled.  Speech enabling our website provides an additional way of accessing our content for people who find it hard to read. This includes people with dyslexia or learning difficulties, those for whom English is not their first language, or anyone with a mild visual impairment.

All you have to do is install the free software from Browsealoud (Opens in new window).

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Browsealoud is a solution that allows you to have website content read to you. As you highlight the text on the page, Browsealoud speaks it to you.

Browsealoud is free to download and you can chose the type of voice, word pronunciations and speech highlighting.

Browsealoud will read every page on our site. It can also read PDFs in Adobe Reader Version 6.0 onwards.

For further help and assistance with the Browsealoud product take a look at the Browsealoud Frequently Asked Questions (Opens in new window) (FAQs) on the Browsealoud website.

Access keys

In order to enable you to use the website without the use of a mouse, the main navigation items have been assigned accesskeys.

How to use access keys in your browser

Browser	What to do
Internet Explorer 5+ (PC)	Hold down the ALT key, press the number of the access key, release both keys then press ENTER
Internet Explorer 4 (PC)	Hold down the ALT key and press the number of the access key
Internet Explorer 5+ (Mac)	Hold down the CTRL key and press the number of the access key
Internet Explorer 4.5 (Mac)	Access keys are not supported
Netscape 6 and earlier (PC and Mac)	Access keys are not supported
Netscape 7 (PC)	Hold down the ALT key and press the number of the access key
Firefox, Mozilla (PC)	Hold down the SHIFT and ALT keys and press the number of the access key
Firefox, Mozilla (Mac)	Hold down the CTRL key and press the number of the access key
Safari and Omniweb (Mac)	Hold down the CTRL key and press the number of the access key
Opera	Hold down the Shift key and press Escape, release both keys, then press the number of the accesskey

Website Enquiries

If you are experiencing any problems with the accessibility of this website please tell us. We're always looking for ways to improve the user experience and value your thoughts.

In addition to the introduction of accesskeys, we have also made a number of other changes. These changes have been outlined below for your information.

HTML

Web pages are created using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). The W3C defines the standards that should be followed when writing HTML to ensure that internet pages are displayed correctly across different computers, including accessibility software, such as screen readers for the partially sighted. We have coded this website to 'HTML 4.01 Transitional' rules.

The W3C offers a HTML validation service, to enable you to see if website providers have taken the care to create correctly coded web pages. You can check the validity of this page by clicking the logo below.

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Stylesheets

This website has been created using cascading style sheets (CSS), which follow the principle of separating content from presentation. The CSS files contain instructions for the page, such as the size of the fonts, the background colour, etc. Internet browsers can be configured to ignore CSS. If you are having difficulty reading the webpages because of the colours, fonts, etc, you can disable the CSS. The page will retain all of the information, without the style formatting.

Images

All informative photographs and graphics on the website have been given relevant alternative text. This is a description of the image, which screen reading software will read out to visually impaired users.

Colours

We have ensured that the web pages' font and background colour contrast notably enough to enable users to read the text, even if they suffer from conditions such as colour blindness. The contrast in colours also helps people viewing the site on a monochrome (black and white) screen.

Tables

All data tables have been created with properly scoped header cells. This enables screen readers to interpret the information in the table correctly. In addition, the tables contain full summaries and caption tags, again, to help screen readers to translate the content in an understandable way.

Content

The copy within our web pages has been written using plain english, to be clear and concise without using jargon.

What else needs to be done?

We are aware that some of our content, such as pdfs and Adobe Flash games, are not totally accessible for all users.  Some externally hosted images, such as the Google logo, do not contain alt text. 

Our videos are hosted externally through YouTube and are embedded onto the website.  The YouTube players control buttons and form fields are unlabelled, and so may not be fully accessible to screen readers.

We are committed to continually improving this site and its content, making it as accessible as possible.

If you have any feedback regarding the accessibility of this site, please contact our Web Communications Team.