Accessibility Policy

We are committed to making sure our services are inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities.

Content

We aim to use clear English and to keep things short and meaningful.

Design

The site is designed to meet the requirements of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2. It also meets the BSI PAS 78:2006 guidelines where possible.

Site organisation

We have one set of pages for the whole site, which we aim to make accessible to all. We don’t have separate sections for pages that are less accessible.

Setting up your browser

We encourage you to use the controls in your own web browser to adjust the website to meet your needs. For example, you might want the text to be larger, or you might want to change the colour of the background. One advantage is that once you have set up your web browser, the changes apply to every website you visit.

The BBC has excellent online guides explaining how to adjust your web browser.

Making text larger

Nowadays, browsers give you easy ‘page zoom’ shortcuts to make the text larger. This is why we don’t have a special button on our website for this purpose.

For example, if you’re on a pc and your browser is Internet Explorer, you can use:

  • Ctrl + to make text bigger
  • Ctrl – to make the text smaller, or
  • Ctrl 0 to go back to the normal size.

If your computer is a MAC, use the CMD button instead of Ctrl.

If you use another browser, check the ‘view’ menu, to find your page zoom shortcut.

When you use page zoom, every part of the page is scaled up or down, not just the words.

We set up the pages so that you can only scale the text up to a certain maximum size. We do this because if the text is too big, the lines don’t wrap round in a way that is easy to read.

If you have a visual impairment, you will probably have your own built-in software to increase the size of the text.

Use of images and multimedia

We aim to label all the images we use. We don’t use images or text just to be decorative.

Where appropriate, our images have ALT tags – invisible descriptions, which can be read aloud to blind users on a screen reader. They are also useful if you opt to turn off the images.

Browser support

What you see on screen may vary a little depending on the browser you use. However, the website is broadly designed to work with:

  • Internet Explorer 7 or later for Windows
  • Safari for the Macintosh
  • Mozilla Firefox for all platforms, and
  • Google Chrome for all platforms.

Proof of compliance

We don’t use automated tools and badges to show that our website is meeting certain web standards – for example for content, accessibility or privacy. We think they can be a bit hit-and-miss or off-putting.

You are welcome to get in touch to tell us if you have a particular problem with the website, or if you have any suggestions for improving it.