Accessibility

This website has been developed with accessibility features to make the information contained in this website available to everyone. This page will detail the various accessibility features that have been built into this site along with any further accessibility information.

Guideline Conformance:

This website conforms to the W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 Level Triple-A (AAA), as indicated by the W3C AAA badge above. Pages bearing this logo indicate a claim of conformance by the page author or content provider to conformance level Triple-A of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, including all Priority 1, Priority 2, and Priority 3 checkpoints defined in the Guidelines. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities. Conformance to these Guidelines will help make the Web more accessible to users with disabilities and will benefit all users.

In addition to conforming with the W3C guidelines, this site also conforms to the guidelines of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act which requires agencies and organisations to make information available to people with disabilities.

The conformance level of this website has been validated from five sources:

• The A-Prompt validation program.
• The Bobby online validator.
• The Cynthia automated validator.
• The WebXACT validator.
• Human validation by a number of web developers.

Validation:

You will see above two additional badges from the W3C, the first saying "XHTML 1.0" and the second saying "CSS". These two badges are a symbol of validated syntax code of the website, meaning that the XHTML and CSS code used to create this website is valid and correctly used to aid in the site's accessibility.

Browser Compatibility:

This site has been tested with Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Netscape and Safari and is compatible with each of the browsers.

Text Sizing:

This site has a text sizing function built into your browser. If you are having difficulty reading the text on this page and would like to increase its size simply do the following:

Internet Explorer:

• Click the "View" menu at the top of the browser window.
• Select "Text Size" from the menu.
• In the sub-menu that appears select which text size you want to use, Smallest, Smaller, Medium, Larger, or Largest (Medium is the default).

Alternatively hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and use the mouse wheel to increase / decrease the text size of this site.

Firefox:

• Click the "View" menu at the top of the browser window.
• Select "Text Size" from the menu.
• Select "Increase" or "Decrease" to alter the size of the text.

Alternatively hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and use the mouse wheel to increase / decrease the text size of this site.

Opera:

• Click the "View" menu at the top of the browser window.
• Then select text size you want to use (as a percentage of the original).

Alternatively hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and use the mouse wheel to increase / decrease the text size of this site.

Netscape Navigator / Communicator:

• Click the "View" menu at the top of the browser window.
• Select "Increase Font" from the menu.

Netscape 6:

• Click the "View" menu at the top of the browser window.
• Then select text size.

Netscape 7:

• Click the "View" menu at the top of the browser window.
• Select "Text Zoom" from the menu.
• In the sub-menu that appears select which text size you want to use.
• Alternatively select "Other" and manually enter the text size (as a percentage of the original) that you want to use.

Access Keys:

Some users may not be able to use pointing devices such as the mouse, therefore in order to assist user's access particular sections of the website, Access Keys have been built into the site. The way in which the Access Keys are used depends on the browser you are using to view this site.

For windows systems if you're using Netscape 6+, Mozilla or Internet Explorer 4 then press Alt and the desired Access Key at the same time. If however you're using Internet Explorer 5 or 6, then press Alt and the desired Access Key followed by pressing Enter. For Macintosh based systems press the CTRL key and then the desired Access Key.

The following is a list of the Access Keys available:

• Skip Navigation: S
• Accessibility: 0
• Site Home: 1
• Site Map: 3
• Feedback: 9

Skip Navigation:

Screen readers often have difficulty when reading websites that contain a lot of navigation links, therefore a Skip Navigation link has been built in. The Skip Navigation link will quite literally allow users of screen readers to jump over all the navigation links so they don't have to listen to a long list of links before getting to the information held on the page.

Disabled Functions:

This site runs using XHTML and CSS. XHTML is the base code supported by all browsers, however some browsers don't support CSS, in addition some users may choose to have CSS disabled. Although the site runs using CSS, it will work correctly if CSS is disabled.

Tabular Information:

Tables can cause problems for screen readers as they can't view tabular information presented in columns, and are instead read in rows. Therefore in order to get around the problems for screen readers, the tables have been coded so that they "transform gracefully" whereby the column headers are coded so they correctly relate to each individual cell, rather than just being visually presented that way.

Acronyms & Abbreviations:

As part of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, all acronyms and abbreviations must have their full meanings specified. Therefore, each abbreviation and acronym on this site will appear in underlined blue text. When the mouse hovers over it, the cursor will change to include a question mark, and a tooltip will appear stating the complete meaning of the abbreviation or acronym.

Printer Friendly:

This site has been built to be 100% printer friendly. You will most likely have encountered situations where you have printed off a page from a website and had all the images and layout of the site printed onto the page as well making the page look very cluttered. This website does not do that, when you print a page of this website all the layout and graphics are removed off the page and only the information is printed in a clear font.