Accessibility
How can I make the pages easier to access and view?
In most browsers there are options you can set to improve the accessibility of the web site you are viewing.
You can specify the text sizes, foreground and background colours of web pages displayed on your computer screen, even if the web designer has already specified these. You can also change the colour used to indicate links on the web pages, or a special colour for links that are used only when the mouse passes over the link.
This is useful if you have low vision, need larger text, or need high-contrast colours. You can set Internet Explorer to use the colours and text sizes you specify, your default Windows colours and text size, or you can create your own style sheets.
If you use Internet Explorer or the Netscape browser to view the Internet, the following guidelines will enable you to enlarge the size of text and control the colours on your screen:
Microsoft Internet Explorer for PC:
1. Open your Internet Explorer Web Browser
2. Select “Tools” from the menu
3. From the list of options that appear, select “Internet Options”
4. Click on the “General” tab
5. Click on the button labelled “Accessibility”
6. To change the text size, select the checkbox marked “Ignore font sizes specified on web pages”
7. To remove background and text colours, select the checkbox marked “Ignore colours specified in web pages”
8. Select “View” from the menu at the top of your screen
9. From the options which appear, select “Text size”
10. Select your desired text size.
Netscape Navigator:
Text:
1. Select “edit” from the menu at the top of the window and chose “Preferences”
2. Open the “Appearance” group and click the “Fonts” category
3. Next to “For the encoding” should read Western to tell the computer which types of letters and symbols to use. From “Size” select 18
4. Next to the “Variable width font” filed is a drop down box: select “Arial”. The “Fixed Width Font” box should already read “Courier New”; From “Size” select 18.
5. To override the text size used by the website designer, select “Use my default fonts overriding document specified fonts” and click “OK”
Colours:
1. Select “Edit” from the menu at the top of the Window and choose “Preferences”
2. Open the Appearance group and click on the “Colours” category
3. Select a colour button to change the colours of text, background, unvisited links and visited links.
4. To override the colours used by the website designer, slect “Always use my colours, overriding document” and click “OK”.
Adobe Acrobat PDF documents:
Many documents and reports within the site are published in PDF (Portable Document Format), and usually in Microsoft Word format too.
Viewers with visual difficulties may find it useful to investigate services that improve the accessibility of Acrobat documents at http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/index.html.
Accessibility tests:
We are working hard to ensure all content conform to the highest standards, including web pages produced by supplier systems. With our new web site design our objective is to meet the highest web accessibility standards. The home page and most content pages now conform to WAI AAA accessibility standards; we are working to ensure that the remainder conform at least to WAI AA standards.
W3C WAI:
WAI, in co-ordination with organisations around the world, pursues accessibility of the Web through five primary areas of work: technology, guidelines, tools, education and outreach, and research and development.
WAI produces accessibility guidelines. Content providers can use these logos on their sites to indicate a claim of conformance to a specified level of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. More information on the accessibility guidelines can be found at the WAI website.
