Help & Accessibility

Text size
Most of the font sizes we use are re-sizable. If you find the text size too small You can change the font size to make it either larger or smaller via your browser settings.:
• In Internet Explorer
select View, then Text Size, and then your preferred size.
• In Netscape
select View, then Text Zoom, and then your preferred percentage size.

Images
All images used in this site include descriptive alt tag attributes. Where an image has no use other than being decorative the alt tag is set to null to allow easy reading of the site by all users. (Is this true? Needs checking out)

Colours
We have taken care to ensure that the site's font and background colour combinations contrast significantly and are effective in ensuring information is still clear when viewed in different colour combinations.

If you wish to override the site's colours, you can do this by changing your browser settings to your own preference.

Technical issues

Code standards
The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) develops strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities. There are three levels of accessibility; 'A', 'AA' and 'AAA'. We aim to conform to at least 'AA' standard for all pages and 'AAA' standard wherever possible. The site uses a Content Management System, which means that each page is created from a template. All templates within the site are XHTML 1.0 and CSS 1.0 compliant, which means that they should work successfully with most browsers.

HTML heading tags are used to convey document structure. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles etc. Navigation menus are marked up as HTML lists. This ensures that the number of links in the list is read out at the start and it can be skipped easily for people using .

Stylesheets
This site uses cascading style sheets for all visual layout. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the use of structured semantic mark up ensures that the content of each page is still readable and clearly structured. You can apply your own stylesheet onto this website by;

• Internet Explorer; select Tools, then Internet Options, then Accessibility, next click on any or all 3 checkboxes to ignore colours, font styles or font sizes, in the same window you can change your style sheet by clicking the checkbox that says, 'format document using my style sheet' then browse to your style sheet and click OK.
• Netscape; select Edit, then Preferences and then Appearance, you will be given the choice to specify your own colours and fonts.

Tables
Most data tables have header cells, to allow screen readers to read through them in the correct order. We have also ensured table summaries are used as well as captions where appropriate.

Tables used for layout only use none of the above attributes to ensure that they are not confused with data tables.

Forms and fields
All forms fields follow a logical tab sequence to ensure easy navigation.
Most form fields also have 'label' and 'id' attributes to explicitly associate the form field with its label to allow for easy entry of data.

Headings and navigation menus
HTML heading tags are used to convey document structure. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles etc. Navigation menus are marked up as HTML lists. This ensures that the number of links in the list is read out at the start and it can be skipped easily.

JavaScript
Javascript is a programming language that can add functionality to web pages. However this doesn't work on all browsers and sometimes is disabled for security reasons. We have used some Javascript, but have kept it to a minimum , and all pages will still display correctly if the Javascript is disabled.

PDF Files
You can view and print PDF (portable document format) files with Adobe Acrobat Reader. This is free software and you will see the symbol for downloading the reader on the pages which contain pdf files.

Website Performance

We monitor the website using an independent measuring tool to ensure the website is performing satisfactorily. We use the service provided by Axzona and the results are updated every week.

Last four weeks results

We will try our best to ensure that the website will be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. However on occasions we may need to remove access to undertake maintenance at very little notice. For planned maintenance we will display notices on the homepage of the website.