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Accessibility

Documents for download

All our downloadable documents on this website will be made available as PDFs. Free software such as Adobe PDF reader, Foxit Reader and Apple’s ‘Preview’ can be used to open PDF files on multiple platforms (PC, Mac, Linux and tablet/mobile devices).

PDF files are designed to be accessible to those who use screen readers or text-to-speech software such as the ‘Read Aloud’ feature in Adobe Reader.

Website accessibility help

While we make every attempt to ensure you get the most out of this website, you may find you can improve your browsing experience by altering particular browser settings. Below, we show how to change the settings for common web-browsers.

When in doubt, check your browsers built-in documentation.

Internet Explorer (IE)

Change font sizes in IE

  • IE7: From the Page menu, choose the Text size option
  • IE6 and below: From the View menu, choose the Text size option

Change colour and font settings in IE

  1. From the Tools menu, choose Internet Options
  2. Select the Accessibility… button (bottom right)
  3. By checking the desired checkboxes, you can force the browser to ignore the colours, font styles and font sizes

Disable images in IE

  1. From the Tools menu, choose Internet Options
  2. Select the Advanced tab (top right)
  3. Scroll down to the Multimedia section
  4. Untick the checkbox labelled Show pictures

Mozilla Firefox

Change font sizes in Firefox

  • From the View menu, choose the Text Size option

Change colour and font settings in Firefox

  1. On OSX: With Firefox in focus, select the Firefox menu, followed by Preferences
  2. On other platforms: From the Tools menu, choose Options
  3. Select the Content tab. To select fonts:
    • Within the Fonts & Colors section, select the default font and size from the drop-down menus
    • Clicking the Advanced… will display a new dialog. To enforce your previous font selection, untick the checkbox Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above
  4. To select colours:
    • Within the Fonts & Colors section, click the Colors… button
    • The dialog that appears allows you to select a colour palette that best suits you
    • To enforce your colour selection, untick the checkbox Allow pages to choose their own colours, instead of my selections above

Disable images in Firefox

  1. On OSX: With Firefox in focus, select the Firefox menu, followed by Preferences
  2. On other platforms: From the Tools menu, choose Options
  3. Select the Content tab
  4. Untick the checkbox labelled Load images automatically

Further help

If your browser isn’t covered here, or you would like more in-depth information, visit My Web my Way, an online guide that explains the various accessibility features provided by your web browser.

Features of the site

Descriptive link text

When the author of a site uses descriptive link text, all links on the page will make sense even when read out of context. For users of assistive technology (e.g. Screen-readers) this can allow them to quickly jump through pages of text to find relevant links.

Meaningful ALT attribute on images

Most images on this site contain additional ‘alternate’ text that is stored with the image. This allows users who otherwise wouldn’t be able to see the image access to the stored information. Although this can help users of assistive technology (e.g. Screen-readers), this also applies to visitors who disable images because of a slow internet connection.

Any image that is considered purely decorative will have a blank alternate text (e.g. alt=””). This reduces the amount of unnecessary content on the page.