Accessibility
Our aim is to make our website as accessible as possible to the widest range of people. This means considering the specific needs of not only those with visual or motor impairments, learning difficulties and other forms of disability, but also different browser technology and Internet connection speeds.
To this end, we have endeavoured to comply with the most widely accepted guidelines for the construction of accessible web sites specified by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Their Website Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) define three levels of accessibility, each progressively more demanding. The most basic level of accessibility is Priority 1 (level A compliance) followed by Priority 2 and 3 (levels AA and AAA).
This site complies with all Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints and where possible Priority 3. We are aware however, that a number of the checkpoints are subjective and there may be instances where interpretation may vary.
Web Standards
This website has been designed to industry standards, using cascading stylesheets (CSS) and validate as per the HTML5 specification. You can find more information about HTML5 on the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website.
Where possible WAI-ARIA roles have been used to help assistive technologies in interpreting the content of this website.
BrowseAloud
BrowseAloud is a free program that reads out all website text including portable document format (PDF) files and Word documents.
Once installed BrowseAloud can be set to automatically read text when you highlight it.
Although not designed to replace a screen reader, BrowseAloud can help people who use assistive technologies or have low literary skills to navigate our website.
Downloading BrowseAloud
- Go to the Downloads section of the BrowseAloud website
- Chose your platform (PC or Mac)
- Save the download button and save the file to your computer
- Open the file (you’ll need a program like WinZip, WinRAR or StuffIt to do this) and double click the install (.exe) file.
- Find and open Zip folder and click on the main file to install BrowseAloud on your computer.
Using BrowseAloud
- Make sure you have some speakers or headphones and they are plugged in and turned on.
- Highlight the text you want read to you (click and drag the mouse over the text).
- Right click on the selected area and chose “Speak selection” from the menu.
Change Text Size
We recommend using your browser settings to change the text size or zoom for our website. You may already be familiar with how to achieve this but as each browser is slightly different we have listed some below:-
Google Chrome: Select ‘Tool’s then ‘Zoom’ or zoom in or out using (ctrl + +) or (ctrl + -).
Internet Explorer 6: Select the ‘View’ menu, and select one of the options under ‘Text Size’.
Internet Explorer 7+: Select the ‘View’ menu, then one of the options under ‘Text Size’ or alternatively zoom in or out using (ctrl + +) or (ctrl + -).
Mozilla Firefox: Select the ‘View’ menu, then ‘Text Size’, then select Increase, Decrease or Normal or alternatively zoom in or out using (ctrl + +) or (ctrl + -).
Netscape: Select the ‘View’ menu, then one of the ‘Text Zoom’ options.
Opera: Select the ‘View’ menu, then one of the ‘Zoom’ percentage options or alternatively using (+) or (-).
Safari: Select the ‘View’ menu, then ‘make text bigger’ (ctrl + +) or ‘make text smaller’ (ctrl + -).
If you use a browser which is not mentioned please consult its help contents and look for similar options.
Searching the website
There are a number of ways you search this site for information:
- Search Form – located in the top right of every page, this will allow you to search by keyword
- A – Z - located in the footer of everyday, this allows you so search alphabetically
- Site Map – located in the footer this will give you a complete overview of every page on the site.