About this site
We've designed this site to be as useful and easy to use as possible for everyone - whatever their level of ability or disability. This page describes the website's key features.
Access to Council services
You can also read details about how people with various disabilities or limited understanding of English can gain access to Council services.
A good website is easy to use by anyone, whatever their age, background or level of ability/disability. We've consulted a cross-section of residents of Reigate and Banstead at key stages in the design of the site.
We've designed every aspect of this website with its users in mind from the start. This includes providing access for people with disabilities who may have special needs.
Accessibility features
This website contains lots of features which make it easy to use for people with various disabilities and special needs, including people who have difficulty:
- seeing or reading text on a screen
- using a mouse
- using a keyboard.
Also, this website works well on non-standard access devices such as screen readers, braille readers, smart phones and other handheld devices.
The site conforms to and often exceeds national and international standards and guidelines for accessible websites and content - in particular the Web Accessibility Initiative's (WAI's) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0).
Learn more about this site's accessibility features.
Standards compliance and validation
All the page templates used in this site have been carefully designed to be 100% valid according to the specifications of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C is the international non-profit organisation which controls the development of the Web and its various technologies.
Having valid pages means that this website has been designed to comply fully with W3C standards.
Why should you care?
Sticking to international web standards helps you and other users by ensuring that all the site's content and facilities will be usable in any browser or access device which also conforms to these standards.
By adhering to standards and quality in this way, we're helping to make sure that this website will continue to work well and serve the needs of all users - now and in the future.
Technical and access issues
This site is designed to work well in any recent browser – including “assistive-technology browsers and equipment used by people with special needs.
This site has been designed strictly to industry standards. Specifically, the styling and layout of each page is completely separated from the page content using “Cascading Style Sheets” (CSS) which is an industry-standard technology.
This makes it much easier for people with a variety of disabilities and special needs, who use various assistive technologies, to use the web site. It also allows the web site to be used in numerous different ways, including mobile phones and personal organisers (PDAs).
Many old browsers are now obsolete because they don’t support CSS. If you’re using a screen but can only see plain text without any layout or graphics, you’re probably using an old browser that doesn’t support CSS.
Although you can still access all the content on the site, we suggest that you upgrade to a recent browser in order to enjoy the best possible user experience of this website (and many others!).
Most current browsers are free. Here are links to some modern browsers you could upgrade to:
Reigate & Banstead Borough Council
Town Hall
Castlefield Road
Reigate
RH2 0SH
01737 276000
Reigate and Banstead Borough Council is not responsible for the content of external sites.
