Accessibility Statement

It is important to Dobbies Garden Centres Plc to be as inclusive as possible in all aspects of our business. This site has therefore been designed, from the outset, to offer a practical level of accessibility.

As well as passing the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) automated accessibility testing procedure to AA standards, we also employ user testing to ensure our content is as accessible as possible. Dobbies Garden Centres Plc also have an ongoing policy of improving accessibility in response to comments from our customers and site visitors. If you have any difficulties with any aspects of this site or would like to make a comment / suggestion with regards to accessibility, please contact us at postmaster@dobbies.com

Accessibility Decisions
Due to the many different ways in which this site can be accessed and the non-standard methods in which access devices render information we chose to keep our site as simple and non-restrictive as possible.

Structure
This site uses XHTML 1.0 strict for its structure and CSS for presentation.

We have developed the website so that the structure is semantically rich and separate from the presentation layer. This ensures that access devices, which do not understand CSS, will still obtain usable information. It also ensures that the site will be easy for users who wish to employ their own style sheets.

Text Resizing
We do not offer a method through the web user interface to alter the sites text size. This functionality is offered through all browsers and also through the computer's operating system.

Access Keys
We decided not to make heavy use of access keys or to set a tab path through the site. It is our belief that because the site is structured in a sensible way, the default tab order should be logically sound. Setting access keys can cause clashes with custom, user defined keys. It is also of limited value due to the non-standard setting of these keys across websites. We cannot expect the user to remember a large set of site-specific keys.

There is always one exception to the rule and that is that we give an access key of 0 to the skip navigation link.

On Windows machines the user would select "ALT" + 0 (the access key). Depending on the browser used, this key combination will either trigger the link, or make the link active - requiring the user to hit hit "RETURN" to trigger it.

On a Mac the "CTRL" key + 0 is the required key combination.

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Skip Navigation
The skip navigation buttons allow a user accessing the site non-visually or navigating via the keyboard to quickly skip to the main text areas in the same way a site user would glance past the header images and onto the text. This button is often hidden from users with CSS compliant browsers, but visible to users of assistive technologies such as screen readers. The button will also make itself visible to users navigating the site by keyboard when it becomes active.