AQA Website Accessibility Statement

Introduction

AQA maintains four ICT services that deploy web-based technologies: a corporate Internet site used to convey information about AQA to its external stakeholders; a company wide Intranet facility used to convey information within AQA; a secure Extranet service (e-AQA) used to provide interactive business facilities between AQA and its customers and other stakeholders; and mainstream business applications which use web-based reporting tools to convey management information to business users within the organisation. The following statement applies to the management of accessibility to all four facilities.

Statement

• Accessibility: AQA acknowledges that is has responsibilities to make its websites as accessible as possible. Firstly, to accommodate the needs of the disabled by taking steps to ensure that, where possible, their experience of its websites is able to match that of any other 'visitor' to these sites. Secondly, to ensure that the presentation of materials on AQA's websites is compatible with the computing resources used by its visitors. In this context, AQA's websites will be built to interface with the leading browser tools and their content will be designed, built and presented to meet the 'open' standards recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Accessibility Initiative (W3C/WIA).



• Conformance and Compliance: AQA acknowledges its responsibilities, with regard to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 part 4 (as amended by the Special Education Needs Disability Act 2001) and the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, to make its websites accessible to all. In seeking to establish an appropriate benchmark against which to measure the effectiveness of its compliance, AQA will observe the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, recommended as part of the W3C/WIA programme. In particular, AQA will aim to achieve conformance with the fourteen checkpoints recommended within these criteria at priority levels 1 and 2. This is more widely known as the 'AA' conformance standard.

How can you help AQA to develop and improve its website accessibility?

We appreciate that there is much to learn about the good accessibility practices that we need to apply to the management of our websites. Furthermore, we acknowledge that we won't always get it right first time. We are, however, committed to ensuring that any issues or problems that do emerge are addressed promptly and effectively. This is where we need your help. If you do experience any difficulties with accessibility, please draw them to our attention by contacting the Web Team (tel: 01483 556042).

Version 1.0 March 2006