Killarney Convention Centre

ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT

Killarney Convention Centre is committed to providing a website which is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability.

When using this website, if you find content that you cannot use because of accessibility reasons, please feel free to CONTACT US and we will do our best to satisfy your needs.

We are actively working to increase the accessibility and usability of our website and in doing so adhere to many of the available standards and guidelines.

Our website has been designed with accessibility in mind, following not only the requirements of the standards described below, but with further features including:

• Focus highlighting, for easier keyboard navigation
• Meaningful link text

COLOURS

Colours are chosen to ensure legibility, providing enough contrast between text and background colours to make text easily readable.

TEXT

Text formatting, including headings and subheadings, are used logically and consistently so that those using screen reading software can easily navigate and comprehend the structure of each page.

PLAIN ENGLISH

To better inform all our users, we use the clearest and most simple language appropriate to explain our products and services.
 

DOCUMENT FORMATS

Some information on the website is provided in PDF format. PDF documents open in the separate software such as the freely available Adobe Reader – most modern computers have such software installed as standard. Newer PDF documents use the more accessible (“tagged”) PDF, although some older documents pre-date that particular format and are untagged. Typically PDF is used either because the document requires a precise printed layout such as forms, or for larger reference documents where the expected volume of usage would not justify the additional effort of manually converting to accessible xHTML.

If you have difficulty with the format of a particular document, and require information in an alternative electronic format, please let us know and we will endeavour to provide a more accessible version. Requests should be forwarded to sales@killarneyconventioncentre.ie. If you require information in large type, audiotape or Braille, please contact Killarney Convention Centre at sales@killarneyconventioncentre.ie.

WEB ACCESSIBILITY INITIATIVE

This website strives to achieve “Triple-A” accessibility of the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0 ), employing best practice techniques where certain Priority 3 checkpoints have become outdated.

The WCAG 1.0 explains 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.

W3C STANDARDS

This site has been built using code compliant with W3C standards for xHTML and CSS. The site displays correctly in current browsers and is compatible with the majority of browsers released since 2002. It uses standards compliant xHTML/CSS code, meaning any future browsers should also display it correctly.

EXCEPTIONS

Whilst Killarney Convention Centre comply with known accessibility and usability guidelines, it is not always possible to do so to the letter of each checkpoint. Browsers and access technologies have outgrown many of the difficulties that once needed guidelines to overcome them, rendering some checkpoints obsolete.

In light of this, we are continually developing solutions that ensure the website conforms to the spirit of each checkpoint, bringing together a high standard of practical accessibility and usability throughout the website. The following exceptions are also in line with the new version of the accessibility guidelines to be released soon.

PRE-FILLED FORM FIELDS

Checkpoint 10.4 of WCAG 1.0 recommends that until user agents (such as browsers or screen readers) are capable of recognising text fields that do not contain default text, text fields in forms should be pre-filled with text.

Users testing, combined with evidence from our web stats, show that this is no longer a necessity for accessibility. Research has in fact shown that pre-filled text fields can cause difficulties for some modern screen readers; therefore we do not include them.

ACCESS KEYS

Checkpoint 9.5 recommends providing keyboard shortcuts to important links, often called “access keys”. However, these have also caused problems, and our own and other organisation’s testing have demonstrated that they are best left off public websites.

FUTURE STRATEGY

• All new content published to the website will be fully accessible.
• We will aim to author more user-friendly, and customer-focused content.
• We will reduce the proportion of documents published in PDF, and continue converting as many existing PDF content to HTML, where appropriate.
• To further demonstrate Killarney Convention Centre’s commitment to providing and maintaining the accessibility of our websites, we will carry out an annual accessibility review and address any issues arising.

Killarney Convention Centre is committed to maintaining and monitoring the accessibility of this website. As part of this process, we welcome all comments, suggestions and details of problems encountered by users. Should you experience any difficulty in using this website, please contact us at sales@killarneyconventioncentre.ie.