accessibility

Oasis is committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability. We are constantly working to increase the accessibility and usability of our website and in doing so adhere to many of the available standards and guidelines.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web and sets guidelines for websites to improve accessibility for users of all abilities. Whilst we strive to adhere to the accepted guidelines and standards for accessibility and usability, it is not always possible to do so in all areas of the website.

This website endeavours to conform to level AA of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities. Conformance with these guidelines will help make the web more user friendly for all people.

This site has been built using code compliant with W3C standards for XHTML and CSS. The site displays correctly in current browsers and using standards compliant XHTML/CSS code means any future browsers will also display it correctly. In order to benefit users of screen readers and text-only browsers this website has been designed so that it will degrade gracefully on browsers that do not support CSS.

Use of images

Images that convey important information have an alternative text attribute to allow the image to be understood with text only browsers or screen readers. Where an image is used for a decorative purpose the alternative text will be left blank. Wherever possible text has been used to improve download time.

Browser compatibility

The standard supported browser versions are:

- Internet Explorer v7.0
- Firefox v2.0
- Opera 8.0
- Netscape 6.2
- Windows (NT4, 95, 98, ME, 2000, XP, Vista) and Macintosh computers (OSX).

Cascading Style Sheets

The website layout is completely controlled by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and has been encoded using XHTML. By using this method of construction the layout of the page is separate from the content of the page; if you are using a browser which does not support CSS then you will be presented by a pure text version of the site with the content laid out in a logical order. This separation of content from layout enables the site to achieve a higher level of accessibility.