Accessibility

“The power of the web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect”  – Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director

Countless blind, partially sighted and physically impaired people worldwide use the Internet to find information and use services that were previously unavailable to them, such as online shopping, banking and of course finding work, from the comfort of their own home. An ordinary computer can be equipped with synthesised speech output or braille display technology to enable people to use the Internet either through sound or by touch. This new technology has the potential to revolutionise the lives of visually impaired people, who until now have been forced to rely on other people for information.

We acknowledge that this technology relies on good website development practices and only works properly when websites adhere to pre-defined standards. Physically impaired people find many websites unusable because the sites falls below acceptable standards.

This website is designed to provide access to all users, regardless of ability. We seek to maintain Priority 1 approval against the W3C Web Accessibility Innitiative and WCAG 1.0 (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines).

How to change the size of text on our website

To change the text size:

• Select Text Size from the View menu. (In some browsers Text Size may be called Text Zoom or Zoom)
• Choose the size that you want from the Text Size menu.

OR

• Hold down Ctrl and press + (to increse text size),
• Hold down Ctrl and press – (to decrease text size)
• Hold down Ctrl and press 0 (to set text size to normal)

Accessibility advice for Apple Mac Users

The Apple Mac operating system includes many accessibility options, including resizing text, text-to-speech and keyboard alternatives to mouse functions.

Visit the Apple website’s accessibility section here .

Help with PDF documents

You can download Portable Document Format (PDF) documents using Adobe Reader– available free of charge here .

If your screen reader software (for example an audio-enabled web browser) is not compatible with Adobe Reader, Adobe provide a free online tool to convert the content of PDF files to text – so they can be understood by most screen reader applications which can be found here .