Accessibility
This help file provides information on the various accessibility options and features available throughout this website.
Access keys
Access keys are shortcuts to common website links or form fields. Most visual web browsers use the Alt (Windows) or the Ctrl (Macintosh) key in combination with an access key to set focus or activate the link. Inline with UK Government recommendations for access keys, the following are standard access keys common throughout this website:
| Access key | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | Home page |
| 2 | News |
| 3 | Site Map |
| 4 | Search |
| 6 | Help and Support |
| 8 | Terms of Use |
| 9 | Contact Us |
| 0 | Accessibility (this page) |
Standards compliance
To provide for the greatest cross browser compatibility, this site generates web content using the latest web standards.
All pages on this site validate as HTML (HyperText Markup Language), a core technology mark-up language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. All style sheets validate as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). All news feeds validate as RSS (Really Simple Syndication).
This site conforms to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines including all Priority 1 checkpoints defined in the Guidelines.
We use the ICRA (Internet Content Rating Association) labels content rating system, that empowers the public, especially parents, to make informed decisions about electronic media by means of an open, objective, content advisory system.
Navigation aids
All pages have rel="home", rel="help", rel="search" etc. links to aid navigation in text-only browsers. Netscape 6 and Mozilla users can also take advantage of this feature by selecting the View menu, Show / Hide, Site Navigation Bar, Show Only As Needed (or Show Always).
All pages on this website have a site search box AccessKey + 4 to help you find the information that you are looking for.
This website provides a site map that groups related documents making locating a document easy. Content pages have Breadcrumbs to describe the location of the document within the document hierarchy.
Large documents have In This Article shortcut links to section headings within the document.
Links
This site uses real links, not links constructed using JavaScript.
Links are written to make sense out of context. Many links have Title attributes which describe the link in greater detail, unless the text of the link already fully describes the target (such as the headline of an article).
Links to external websites have a visual identifier. Links to external websites do not open in new windows, thus not braking the Back Button Rule.
Content
All content images used in this site include descriptive Alt attributes. Purely decorative graphics include null Alt attributes.
Each document on this website is appropriately titled and has meaningful headings. Data tables use headers to provide column titles. All acronyms in documents have corresponding descriptions. Real numbered and bulleted lists are used, rather than bullet images next to links. All form fields have labels associated with them.
Text size and colour
Text on this site uses relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified Text Size option in visual browsers.
We use colour safely to ensure there is enough contrast between foreground & background and that links can be easily distinguished by colour-blind people. This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout - if your browser or browsing device does not support style sheets, the content of each page is still readable.