Highlands and Islands Enterprise is committed to making its output as accessible as possible to all audiences (including those with visual, hearing, cognitive or motor impairments) to fulfil its public service mandate and to meet its requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act. We continually test our websites with a number of browsers, screen readers, accessibility and HTML validators, and other web tools. The results of such reviews are incorporated into improvements for our sites.

HIE websites include the following features to improve accessibility:

• A text-only facility and sitemap on every page.
• The text-only pages can be adjusted to suit the text size and colour needs of different users.
• Images on the site contain 'alt tags', which describe the images to aid people who use a screen reader. 
• Invisible 'jump to content' links at the top of each page enable people using text-to-voice browsers to bypass the navigation bar and go directly to the main content each time a page is accessed.
• Text links are formatted to be as self-evident as possible.
• The site's style sheets allow users to resize the text of the site in browsers that support this feature (generally available under the View menu).
• Links to external sites open in a new window. Note: Highlands and Islands Enterprise is not responsible for the content or accessibility of these referenced sites.
• Layout is accomplished mainly with cascading style sheets (CSS) and tables, but the site is also designed to display well if CSS is not supported.   

From time to time, HIE undertakes new website developments and experiments with new web-based processes. We make all efforts to ensure we make these new developments fully accessible at the earliest possible opportunity.

Many of the links on our websites point to forms and publications in Adobe Acrobat® Portable Document Format (PDF) or Microsoft® formats. Both companies offer tools and information to increase the accessibility of documents.
 

WAI Stamp.

WAI Stamp.