We have tried to make the site as accessible as possible for all visitors.
Accessibility standards
Our goal for the website is that all pages should meet the Priority 2 (Level AA) checkpoints of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
A limited number of pages, such as those displaying maps, do rely on JavaScript and will not be accessible to users of certain assistive technologies or users who have turned off JavaScript in their browsers.
We will continue to try to improve the accessibility of the website, and your feedback is important to us for this.
Browsers and Internet Explorer 7
This website has been tested on Internet Explorer 6 and the new version 7. It has also been tested on Safari for the Mac and Firefox.
Controlling text and colours in your web browser
You can specify the font sizes, styles and colours and foreground and background colours of Web pages displayed on your computer screen, even if the author of the Web page has already specified these. You can also specify the colour used to indicate links in 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 fonts, or need high-contrast colours. You can set Internet Explorer to use the colours and fonts you specify, your default Windows colours and fonts, or the settings you specify in your own style sheet.
If you use the Internet Explorer or Netscape browsers to view the Internet, the following guidelines will enable you to enlarge the size of the text and control the colours on your screen.
Microsoft Internet Explorer for PC
Open your Internet Explorer Web Browser
Select 'Tools' from the menu at the top of your window
From the options which appear, select 'Internet options....'
Click on the 'General' tab
Click on the button marked 'Accessibility'
To change your font size, select the checkbox marked 'Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages'
To remove background and font colours, select the checkbox marked 'Ignore colours specified on web pages'
Click OK (and again if necessary)
Select 'View' from the menu at the top of your window
From the options which appear, select 'Text size'
Select your desired text size
Microsoft Internet Explorer for Apple Mac
Open your Internet Explorer Web Browser
Select the 'edit' menu at the top of your window
From the options menu which appear, select 'preferences'
Click on 'web content'
Deselect the button marked 'show style sheets'
Return to the list of preferences
Click on 'web browser'
Select 'language/fonts'
Select the font size you require
Instructions for users of Netscape Navigator
Text
Select 'Edit' from the menu at the top of the window and choose 'Preferences'
Open the Appearance group and click the 'Fonts' category
Next to 'For the encoding' should read Western to tell the computer which types of letters and symbols to use. Select the required 'Size'.
Next to the Variable Width Font field is a drop down box: select the option required for this and the fixed Width Font box. Again select the 'Size' as required.
To override the fonts used by the designer of the web page, select 'Use my default fonts overriding document specified fonts'
Click 'OK'
Colours
Select 'Edit' from the menu at the top of the window and choose 'preferences'
Open the Appearance group and click the 'Colours' category
Select a colour button to change colours of text, background, unvisited links, or visited links.
To override the colours used by the designer of the web page, select 'Always use my colours, overriding document'
Click 'OK'
Firefox
Select the ‘tools’ menu, then click ‘options’, then click ‘fonts & colours’.
Choose the font you want to use, and tick ‘always use my fonts’ check box, then click ‘OK’.
PDF and accessibility
Visually impaired users may have trouble reading PDF files with screen reader software. To overcome this you can go to the Access Adobe website and use their online conversion tools for Adobe PDF Documents.
Feedback
If you think that there is an accessibility problem with the site please contact us and explain the difficulties you are having. We will try to overcome any problems we are made aware of.
