Accessibility

Different Ways to Navigate the Site

Please find below information about the accessibility features of this website.

Skip Navigation

A skip navigation facility has been provided on this site for the benefit of users with screen readers

It can be implemented by using the skip navigation access key combination CTRL, ALT and S depending on which particular browser you are using.

Implementing skip navigation on any given page allows you to bypass the navigation areas and go directly to that page’s main content.

PDF Documents

If you are using a screen reader, we endeavour to make PDF documents on our site as accessible as possible, if you’re still having problems accessing our PDF documents please visit Adobe online conversion tool The Adobe conversion tool will provide a conversion to HTML 3.2 or text file format.

Increasing Text Size

This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified “text size” option in visual browsers. Some users might find screen text easier to read by increasing the size at which text is displayed. To do this you should simply adjust your browser’s settings:

1. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, go to the View menu, select Text Size and then either Larger or Largest.
2. If you use Firefox, go to the View menu, select Text Size and then either Increase Ctrl + +, Decrease Ctrl + – or Normal Ctrl + 0.
3. If you use Opera, go to the Tools menu, select Preferences then click on the Web pages tab. Select the normal font button. A dialogue box appears and provides options to increase/decrease font size, font type, weight and style.
4. If you use Netscape Navigator, go to the View menu and choose Increase Font until the text is the size you require.

Images

All content images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null ALT attributes. Complex images include LONGDESC attributes or inline descriptions to explain the significance of each image to non-visual readers.

Visual Design

This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.

If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Accessibility References

1. W3 accessibility guidelines which explains the reasons behind each guideline.
2. W3 accessibility techniques which explains how to implement each guideline.
3. W3 accessibility checklist a busy developers’ guide to accessibility.
4. U.S. Federal Government Section 508 accessibility guidelines.

The references above relate to WCAG 1.0 (Web Content Accessibiity Guidelines). WCAG 2.0 is currently in draft form and we are monitoring its’ development.

Accessibility Software and Services

1. Watchfire WebXACT a free service to analyze web pages for compliance to accessibility guidelines.
2. HTML Validator a free service for checking that web pages conform to published HTML standards.
3. Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer, a tool for viewing your web pages without a variety of modern browser features.
4. JAWS a screen reader for Windows. A time-limited demo is available.
5. Lynx a free text-only web browser.