To trigger accessibility accesskeys on this website:
- For Common Windows Browsersuse : Shift + Alt + [the accesskey]
- Shift is optional in some browsers.
- For Common Mac Browsers use: Ctrl + Alt + [the accesskey]
- For Opera and Firefox users the browser accesskey may also be accessed as:
- Opera prior version 15: [SHIFT] [ESC] + accesskey
- Firefox: [ALT] [SHIFT] + accesskey
Note that Firefox can customize the required modifier key by user's preferences.
There are two main ares of accessibility help throughout this site:
Accessibility Options
Triggered by the accessibility key A e.g. Ctrl + Alt + A or clicking on the wheelchair icon in the page margin ♿. This bring up the accessibility menu:
There are many options for the user to make use of here.
- Increase Text Size – make text font size bigger
- Decrease Text Size – make text font size smaller
- Increase Text Spacing – add spacing between words and special characters
- Decrease Text Spacing – remove spacing between words and special characters
- Invert Colours – convert to contrast colors (especially helpful for night time work) – hot key combo to toggle this setting is Ctrl + Alt + I
- Underline Links – add an underline to all clickable links and buttons – Ctrl + Alt + U
- Big Cursor – enlarge cursor size – Ctrl + Alt + C
- Reading Guide – add a black horizontal line to the page – Ctrl + Alt + R
- Text to Speech – enable screen reading, click on text to hear text – Ctrl + Alt + T
- Reset button in the upper-right corner of the menu
- X in the upper-left corner icon to close menu
Skip Navigation
Triggered by the accessibility key 9 e.g. Ctrl + Alt + 9 or use of the TAB key then click on the collapsed Keyboard Navigation menu:
The resulting menu will permit navigation to ARIA landmarks such as Footer, Header, Menu, Main and Search plus an outline of the page using any heading level elements on the page e.g.
ARIA roles
The following ARIA landmark roles are used on this website:
- Banner: The page header. A region that contains a header image and Site Tilte, rather than page-specific content;
- ContentInfo: The page footer. A large perceivable region that contains information about the parent document. In this case the region is the page footer;
- Main: The main content of a document;
- Navigation: A collection of navigational elements ( links) for navigating the document or related documents.
- Search: The search box for this websitre which appears on every page.
Accesskeys
With one exception (the feedback form - already utilised for keyboard navigation by Joomla) this site follows the UK Government standard on accesskey usage i.e.:
| Access Key | Function |
|---|---|
| 1 | Homepage |
| 2 | What's new |
| 3 | Site map |
| 4 | Search |
| 8 | Terms and conditions |
| 9 | Used to bring up the Joomla Skip to Navigation menu (this is the exception as it is over-ridden by Joomla) |
| C | Contact/Feeback form - non standard because of the alternative use of Accesskey 9 |
| 0 | Access key details (and other accessibility information about this website) |
Tab / Tabindex
There is limited use of tab keys for field ordering on this site and use depends on your browser.
No CSS Stylesheet?
The site will still present without CSS styling enabled and there are jump links to aid navigation. The jump links also appear in the accessibility bar if CSS is enabled.
Images and Slideshows
Single images have alt captions wherever possible to aid with accessibility. Slideshows may not have this functionality but a general description for the slideshow will be provided by a link or title.
Links and iframes
Each link and iframe should each have a title to aid their accessibility.