At Epistem PLC, we want our site to be accessible by all, and for it to follow the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) guidelines, known as the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

As part of this work the WAI published the first version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in 1999. These are accepted as the definitive set of international guidelines used for building accessible websites. All other guidelines and standards are derived from these.

WAI recommends that to make a web site as accessible as possible, with the starting point being compliant code. This site was constructed using valid XHTML and CSS.

Features include:

• Simple use of layout tables which still allow content to read when the tables are linearised or displayed in a simple browser such as Lynx.
• Images contain an alternative textual rendering
• Use of style sheets to separate content from display
• Appropriate use of HTML tags