Accessibility
We are committed to ensuring our website is accessible
and usable for all potential users.
When building the site we have tried to ensure that
everyone can access its content regardless of any disability.
We are endeavouring to follow the guidelines set
by:
The site is still under construction to comply with
the standards set. We are continually working towards compliance with these standards
and we are looking towards the use of CSS to achieve further compliance.
Fonts
All fonts used are scalable. This means you can adjust
the type size to suit you by using the options in your browser menu. Go to the 'View'
menu in your browser window and choose eg Font or Text Size to increase or decrease
the font size.
Design
The website site uses tables for the time being but
we are looking to utilise Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to separate the design from
the content. This will mean that if your browser does not support CSS or if you
wish to turn it off then all pages are still easily readable and fully functional.
The site is of fixed width design. The
site requires no horizontal scrolling for the most popular screen resolutions and
window sizes (800x600, 1024x768).
Accesskeys
Our main menu options have been assigned keyboard
access keys for users who do not use pointing devices such as a mouse.
The access keys we have used are logical and follow
the page names, using the first
letter of each page name.
Accesskeys are usable in the most popular browsers,
usually by holding down the Alt key and the required letter (or
number) of the Accesskey
Browsers
This website has been tested on the following browsers:
Windows:
- Internet Explorer 6 and 7,
- Mozilla Firefox 1.x and 2
However, we welcome feedback from users if there
is an issue with any of the mainstream browsers.
We have tried to develop the site in a way that ought to be usable across
most browsers.
Content
The content has been written and formatted to make
it more easily accessible.
For example:
- headings highlight sections of text
- sentences are short
- links use meaningful text
Use of Accessibility software
The most popular software that may be used for improving
access to websites is listed below. Some are free, some are commercial but free
demos are usually available.
- JAWS, this is a screen reader for Windows OS.
A time-limited, demo is available.
-
Home Page Reader, this is a screen reader for WindowsOS. A demo is available.
- Lynx
browser, this is a free “text-only” web browser for blind users with refreshable
Braille displays.
- Links browser, this is a free text-only web browser for visual users with
low bandwidth.
- Opera
browser, this is a visual browser with many accessibility features, including
text zooming, user stylesheets and image toggle. A free version is available. This
is compatible with Windows, Macintosh and Linux.
Contact us
We are continually working to improve the quality
and accessibility of the site. While we make every reasonable effort to ensure that
it is accessible to the widest number of users, if you experience any problems or
have any questions regarding the accessibility of the this site please don't hesitate
to
report any problems to us.
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