The Irish Maritime Development Office as part of the Marine Institute is committed to providing information and services that are fully accessible to people with disabilities.
Page Layout and Navigation
Most pages on the Irish Maritime Development Office's website are structured as follows:
- Global links: Jump to content, Home, About Us, Publications, Contact Us, Accessibility, Online Policies, Site Map, Subscriptions, Social Media Links, Share Links, Text Sizer.
- Main navigation: Links to the main sections of the web site (Business, Statistics, Policy, Education &Training, News & Events)
- Breadcrumb trail: States where you are on the web site now and provides a trail of links from there to the home page.
- Search box: Can be used to search for keywords on the Irish Maritime Development Office's website. The search box is located on top right hand corner on every web page.
- Section navigation: When you select a category in the main navigation you will be brought to the main subsection page which has further navigation links to the main subsections within that area. The home page also has direct links to pages within the following main sections of Business, Statistics, Policy, Education &Training and News & Events. The Irish Maritime Development Office's home page also has a slider image which highlights key activities in the services that the IMDO provide.
- Content: Main content for that page, structured using headings and paragraph elements.
Standards Compliance
The Irish Maritime Development Office as part of the Marine Institute Marine Institute is committed to maintaining this web site in accordance with priority 1 and 2 of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines and the Irish National Disability Authority Guidelines for Web Accessibility. Work on compliance with these guidelines is ongoing, so while all new content should be compliant, some older content may not adhere to these standards at the moment.
- The availability of our font sizer allows text to be resized appropriately across multiple devices and platforms.
- The IMDO website uses structured semantic markup.
- The IMDO website uses cascading style sheets for visual layout. This ensures that content is perfectly linear and improves performance on a wide range of browsers and other user agents.
Maintaining Accessibility
To help deliver and maintain an accessible website, the Irish Maritime Development Office as part of the Marine Institute has published internal guidelines to guide web administrators and authors in the creation of accessible web content.
These guidelines cover issues such as:
- Creating user friendly web content
- Writing meaningful alternative text
- Creating accessible tables
- Creating accessible forms
- Creating accessible link phrases
Inquiry Officer
The Irish Maritime Development Office as part of the Marine Institute has appointed Inquiry Officers to investigate complaints made under Section 38 of the Disability Act, 2005. Any individual can make a complaint to the Inquiry Officer if the Institute has not complied with sections 25, 26, 27 or 28 of the Disability Act 2005. A complaint can be made in person, by telephone or in writing by letter, fax or email. Complaints should be made to the Inquiry Officer.
The Marine Institute Inquiry Officer Contact Details:
Inquiry Officer,
Marine Institute,
Rinville, Oranmore,
Galway, Ireland
Telephone: +353 (0) 91 387 200
Email: inquiryofficer@marine.ie
In the event of a complaint:
- Your concerns will be acknowledged within two working days of receipt into the Marine Institute and/or the Irish Maritime Development Office.
- If satisfied that a complaint relates to an alleged failure by the Marine Institute to comply with sections 25, 26, 27 or 28 of the Disability Act 2005. A full investigation will be carried out by the Inquiry Officer(s) and appropriate Marine Institute Director.
- All staff members are obliged to fully cooperate with the Inquiry officer's investigation.
- Where a failure to comply is identified, the Inquiry Officer will outline the steps to be taken to ensure future compliance in the written report that is prepared at the end of each investigation.
- A decision will be notified to the complainant within 20 working days from the date of receipt of the complaint via a summary of the findings and decision of the report by the Marine Institute.