Accessibility

In keeping with our policy of customers first, and our obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), we will ensure that our website is accessible to people who have visual, hearing, motor or cognitive impairments.

Making our website accessible is a core aim and we will try to ensure that it is usable with a broad range of operating systems, browsers and specialist assistive technologies.

As a standard, we employ all the following methods to ensure our site is accessible to as many people as possible:

• All pictures have an alternative text description.
• Our stylesheets allow for text resizing using the View – Text Size option in the browser toolbar.
• The website stylesheets can be easily switched off for high-contrast viewing should the theme be difficult to read.
• We are committed to plain English in all our written content.
• Our site has been designed without the use of tables except where we need to represent normally tabulated content, i.e. timetables.
• The website can be navigated without the use of a mouse.
• A sans-serif font is used for easier readability.
• We do not use all-capitals for emphasis, except for visual impact in a minority of cases.
• We use a hierarchy of heading markups, i.e. an H1 tag for site/page headings, an H2 for page/subheadings etc., which makes it easier for screen readers to work out the stucture of a page.
• Our site can be viewed in a logical order when all styling is turned off.

Helping you make your computer easier to use

To find out more about making your computer more accessible and easy to use, have a look at AbilityNet’s website. They have a range of tips and suggestions relating to accessibility issues.

If there is an instance when our site does not meet the need of a specific disabled user group we will make changes to our currrent content, wherever appropriate, so that we can become more inclusive to a wider audience. Please contact us if this is the case.

Easy navigation links

You can use these hotlinks in conjunction with your browser accessibility keyboard shortcuts to locate the following sections of the site:

• The accessibility page (keyboard shortcut a).
• The homepage (keyboard shortcut h).
• The top of the current page (keyboard shortcut t).
• The page content of the current page (keyboard shortcut c).
• The bottom of the current page (keyboard shortcut b).