Accessibility features

We offer the following accessibility features on our site:

• a skip to content link to help screen reader and keyboard users access content quickly
• a search facility and sitemap
• alternative stylesheets (or viewing themes), including a linearised version with large text and a version designed to assist reading for visitors with dyslexia (this feature will not be enabled until the new site goes live due to issues with the site being in a sub-folder)
• resizable text
• a flexible page layout (the right column resizes with the width of your browser window, but stops at a certain width to prevent long line lengths)

Accessibility and usability of our site

Our website strives to uphold the principles and best practice of the WCAG 1.0 AAA guidelines. While we aim to comply with the WCAG guidelines, we recognise that web technology has moved on since their creation, and a number of them are less applicable than at their time of publication.

Our site’s code

The site has been built to comply with standards (x)HTML and CSS2. At every stage the code has been checked for accessibility using a range of automated checks. In older browsers (Netscape and Internet Explorer 4 and earlier) it will appear as an unstyled document. All information and functionality will still be accessible.

‘Skip to’ Navigation Link

At the top of every page the first link reached by using tabs or a screenreader is a link that will make reading skip past the rest of the menu items and commence at the beginning of the main page content.

Access Keys

We have not included access keys on our site because current research suggests that they cause too much conflict with screen readers.