Accessibility

This page explains how the Wollaton Historical & Conservation Society aims to make this website accessible to all users, including any known limitations and how we work to reduce their impact. It also includes our Style Guide, which supports both design and consistency across the site.

Accessibility Statement

We aim to make this website as accessible as possible for all users, following good practice based on WCAG principles (clarity, usability, and structured content).

The site is designed to be:

Clear and easy to navigate
Structured with headings and sections
Written in straightforward language where possible

Limitations

Some elements are controlled by the website platform (Spanglefish) and cannot be fully customised.

We reduce the impact of these limitations by ensuring:

Each section has a clear heading
Link purposes are explained in surrounding text
Content is presented consistently across pages

Screen Reader Support

The site is structured to support screen reader use through:

Logical heading structure
Grouped content sections
Descriptive link context

Feedback

If you experience any difficulty accessing content or need information in another format, please contact us and we will do our best to help.

Technical Information

This website uses the Spanglefish content management system and is designed to work across modern browsers and devices, including desktops, tablets, and mobile phones. It supports standard browser features such as zooming and keyboard navigation and is intended to be compatible with screen readers.

Style Guide

These are our guiding principles in our design:

Text will be written in as simple a way as possible whilst still conveying the correct meaning.
Helvetica (16 pixels) will be our body text font and Marcellus will be our heading font.
Uploaded and linked documents on the site, such as PDFs, will be created in an accessible way.
Images, when presented singly, will usually be centred to better support desktop viewing.
Images should have alternative descriptions that allow screen readers to explain the image content.
Link text such as "click here" will be avoided because it does not clearly describe the destination.
Good levels of contrast will be used between text and background colours:
- Black text will be used in the main (against a white or neutral background) and dark blue text for headings to help locate content.
- Red text will be used by exception only, as it is not considered accessible, especially when used against a light background.
Main areas of text will be left aligned rather than justified. (Justification leads to "rivers of white space" that disrupt reading.)
A full stop will be followed by 1 space rather than 2 spaces (as this is the modern electronic protocol).
Upper case for entire words will be avoided.
Bold font will be used sparingly, as excessive use can reduce readability.
Italic font will be used sparingly and will typically be reserved for titles of books or publications in body text.
Underlining will not be used, to avoid confusion with hyperlinks, which are underlined.
Em dashes and spaced en dashes will be avoided, as they are poor for accessibility.
Named pages or buttons on our website, and links to them, will always have the first letter of each word capitalised.
Quotations of direct speech (or journal article titles or presentations) will be within double quotation marks (now considered more universal).

While this is not a formal style guide, the following conventions are used to support accessibility:

Time: either 2.00pm or 14:00, and if written as a time range, then it will be 2.00pm to 5.00pm or 14:00 to 17:00 (no en dash or hyphen)
Date: Sunday 15 June 2025, or if the day is not referenced, then it will be 15 June 2025 (no commas or th are used)
Day: represented as 3 letters when abbreviated
Week commencing: uses ISO 8601 international standard for dates and times, which designates Monday as the first day of the week
Decade: 1940s not 1940's (no apostrophe)
Century: 16th century (no superscript and lower case), but 16th-century when used adjectivally
Span of years: 1974-1978 (hyphen, no spaces)
Circa date: c.1981 (no space, no date range)
Numbers: zero through to nine spelt as words and numerals for numbers ten and above, though exceptions exist for dates etc
Number abbreviation: no. 1 (space)
Bullet points: full stops only if each statement reads as a sentence
Quotation marks: full stop outside the quotation mark if the quote is a phrase or part of a sentence (else placed inside) - British English

Note for future website administrators only:

Our web pages default to starting with an h1 heading, please change it to h2 and run sequentially. (Main banner counts as an h1 heading.)

For any comments on this website's accessibility, please let us know using our Contact form.

Website created for WHaCS by Robert Binger.