Accessibility

Using our website

We recognise the importance of providing a website that is accessible to all users. As such we have made every effort to ensure that our site can be easily used by people with disabilities.

Accessibility

To ensure this website is as accessible as possible we have designed the site to adhere to Level “AA” of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines written by the World Wide Web Consortium.

Accessibility features

The following features have been designed into this website to ensure ease of use by all users.

Navigation

A hidden menu has been placed at the beginning of each page to allow screen reader users to link to the main area of the page.

Headings and navigation menus

HTML heading tags are used to convey document structure. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles etc.

Navigation menus are marked up as HTML lists. This ensures that the number of links in the list is read out at the start and it can be skipped easily.

Images

All images used in this site include descriptive alt tag attributes. Where an image has no use other than being decorative the alt tag is set to null to allow easy reading of the site by all users.

Colours

We have taken care to ensure that the site’s font and background colour combinations contrast significantly and are effective in ensuring information is still clear when viewed in different colour combinations.

If you wish to override the site’s colours, you can do this by changing your browser settings to your own preference.

Font size

Most of the font sizes we use on our site are sizable. You can change the font size to make it either larger or smaller via your browser settings.

You can change the font size in the following ways depending on your browser;

In Internet Explorer; select View, then Text Size, and then adjust to your preferred size.

In Netscape; select View, then Text Zoom, and then adjust to your preferred percentage size.

In Firefox; select View, then Text Size, and then adjust to your preferred size.

Stylesheets

This site uses cascading style sheets for all visual layout. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the use of structured semantic mark up ensures that the content of each page is still readable and clearly structured.

You can apply your own stylesheet onto this website as follows:

In Internet Explorer;

• select Tools, then Internet Options, then Accessibility
• next click on any or all three checkboxes to ignore colours, font styles or font sizes
• in the same window you can change your style sheet by clicking the checkbox that says, ‘format document using my style sheet’ then browse to your style sheet and click OK

In Netscape;

• select Edit, then Preferences and then Appearance
• you will be given the choice to specify your own colours and fonts

In Firefox;

• The ability to apply your own stylesheet is provided as a third-party add-on developed by Illinois Center for Information Technology Accessibility (ICITA)
• Full instructions for utilizing this plug-in are provided on their website

Forms and fields

All form fields follow a logical tab sequence to ensure easy navigation.

All form fields explicitly associate the form field with its label to allow for easy entry of data.

JavaScript

The use of JavaScript has been kept to an absolute minimum. Where it is used then all pages are still accessible should JavaScript be turned off.

Links

All links have been written to make sense when taken out of context. Where appropriate, we have also added link title attributes to describe the link in greater detail.

Useful links:

If you would like to know more about accessibility on the Internet, you may be interested in the following websites:

w3.org/wai – W3C accessibility guidelines

rnib.org.uk – The Royal National Institute for the Blind

disability.gov.uk – The Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA)