Accessibility

The guide is built as plain pages with a small amount of script; zoom, reader modes and translation all work.

The county map

The map of Cheshire East, Cheshire West and Chester and Warrington has a title and a written description giving each area's share of properties without a gas meter, and the same figures appear in the caption and in the page text. The field hatching inside each area is decoration.

Rolling numbers

The figures under the home page map roll up like an odometer when they come into view. Screen readers hear the number itself, not the moving digits, and with reduced motion the digits simply show the final value.

The rural route finder

The tool is five groups of radio buttons with visible labels, usable with the arrow and tab keys. The result updates as you choose and is announced politely; each route and grant band is marked with a tick, question mark or cross and described in words, so nothing depends on the symbols or their colours.

Tables and texture

Data tables have header cells and captions and scroll sideways inside their own frame on small screens. The fine grain on dark panels is a light texture kept faint enough that text contrast is unaffected.

Language

Pages are written in plain English, with grant and planning terms explained where they first appear and collected in the glossary. Figures are given in words as well as tables where they matter, so a screen reader user can follow the argument without navigating every table cell.

Printing a page

Any guide can be printed from the browser. The route finder prints the answers currently chosen and the result beside them, which is a convenient record to take to a conversation with an installer or the council.

Maps and colour

The three council areas are told apart on the map by labels and by two different hatch patterns, not by colour alone, and the highlighted area on each area page is also named in the heading above it.

Telling us about a problem

Use the form at the foot of this page with the page address and what went wrong. SEO-DONS LTD answers by email.