Accessibility
We are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability.
We are actively working to increase the accessibility and usability of our website and in doing so adhere to many of the available standards and guidelines.
This website endeavours to conform to level Double-A of the World Wide Web Consortium W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.
These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities. Conformance with these guidelines will help make the web more user friendly for all people.
This site has been built using code compliant with W3C standards for HTML and CSS. The site displays correctly in current browsers and using standards compliant HTML/CSS code means any future browsers will also display it correctly.
Whilst we strive to adhere to the accepted guidelines and standards for accessibility and usability, it is not always possible to do so in all areas of the website.
We are continually seeking out solutions that will bring all areas of the site up to the same level of overall web accessibility. In the meantime should you experience any difficulty in accessing the our website, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Where possible use an up-to-date browser
By using an up-to-date browser (the program you use to access the internet) you will have access to a much richer set of options to aid you as your navigate your way around this site.
The standard browsers we would recommend are below:
- Mozilla FireFox
- Google Chrome
- Safari (MAC only)
- Microsoft Edge
Options in our site
Alternative Style
Please choose a link below to change the way the site looks. Once set, the site will remain in this style for upto 30 days or until you select a different option.
We endeavor to ensure the site looks correct is these different styles but because of the constantly changing nature of the site and its content, this may not always be possible. If you do spot anything which doesn’t look quite right then please let us know
NVDA (NonVisual Desktop Access) is a free screen reader for computers running on the Windows operating system. The latest version can be downloaded for FREE here (on this page you may be asked for a voluntary donation, if you do not wish to donate, click “skip donation this time”)
WAVE icon
WAVE is developed and made available as a free community service by WebAIM. Originally launched in 2001, WAVE has been used to evaluate the accessibility of millions of web pages. Read more here
Windows Narrator
Microsoft Windows Narrator is available in most versions of Mircosoft Windows operating systems and reads text on the screen aloud and describes events like error messages so you can use your PC without a display. To find out more and how to enable it on your version, please click here
Control your computer with your voice
Apple Mac and Windows operating systems both provide ways to control your computer with voice recognition. The BBC provide a guide to switching on voice recognition across the different versions but settings are different again if you are using Apple OS X Yosemite.
Third party voice recognition software is available too.
In summary
We are committed to providing you access to our most valuable resources. If you do spot anything which doesn’t look quite right or have any suggestions for how we might improve our services then please let us know