Accessibility

Tell us if you are having problems accessing this site

This site has been designed to be usable and accessible.

Feedback

If you cannot find something where you expect it to be, or something is difficult to use, then we would like you to tell us about it.

You can do this by adding your comments to the Comments page.

The Comments link appears at the bottom (or footer) of every page on this site.

For general guidance on how to get the most from your browser go to the BBC's My Web My Way site.

User testing

This site has been designed based upon sound usability principles. Though we consider this to be the right approach the site has to work in the real world.

The best way to approach this problem is to test with real people. We have already done some initial user testing using volunteers from Bolton. Testing the site using people who have never used it before is one the best ways to objectively test usability. We believe the site passed that test.

How the Site is Maintained

If you find a problem that proves to be significant, the chances are that this can be quickly and easily corrected. This is because the site is built using a web-based Content Management System (CMS).

What this means in practice is that the site editor can access and change any page on the site very easily.

Is the information up to date?

It can be frustrating if an article on the web doesn't have a publication date and you need to know the information you are reading is current. If you want to check how recently any page on this site was published you can check the date printed at the bottom of each page.

For instance: the footer to this page will tell you that this page was last updated on March 9th 2009.

What are web standards?

Bolton Museum and Archive Service is a Bolton Council service and these web pages have to comply with nationally agreed technical guidelines. This is true for all local government sites. These guidelines are in place to ensure a basic level of accessibility.

Basic standards

Since 2004 all public service sites have had to comply with what is known as the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) standard. The WAI describes three levels of compliance. These are labelled as A, AA and AAA

This site is designed to comply with the AA standard. If you think that these pages do not comply then please let us know.

Online testing

Anyone with access to the internet can check that a web page is compliant by using the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) online validation tool.

Here is an example of this page's online validation report. Every single page on this site should meet these requirements.

Using the validation tool shows that this site validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional which means that we can display the following W3C logo. Of course it could be that some pages do not comply, if you find any please let us know.

In practice passing this test ensures a minimum level of compliance. All pages should display as they were intended in any current web browser and using all the most common screen sizes.

If you happen to be using an older web browser, all the information on this site might not display as intended. Even so, you should still be able to view text and images and navigate through the pages without any problem.

Web Accessibility Resources

The Web Accessibility Initiative

"WAI develops...

guidelines widely regarded as the international standard for Web accessibility
support materials to help understand and implement Web accessibility
resources, through international collaboration"