Help and Accessibility.

There are a number of ways to navigate around this site.

Headings.

All content is chunked into sections with clear headings to help you navigate the page. Assistive technology users should note that all headers are correctly formatted in HTML. This means that if your technology supports header recognition, you can navigate the page directly through the headings themselves.

HTML header formatting has been applied not just as a content organisation tool, but also as a navigation aid. Heading1 is only used for page titles, and Heading4 only used for navigation menu titles, while Headings 2 and 3 are used to organise text on the page. This means that if your technology supports header formatting, you can find out the page title from anywhere on the page by selecting Heading1. Similarly you can go to the navigation menus from anywhere without needing to scroll or find links on the page.

Page Contents List.

Each page has a list of page contents after the page title, and provides you with a list of links to all headings on the page. apart from making it easier to navigate the page, this also means that blind users who browse by tabbing do not miss out on any content. The last items in this list will take you straight to the navigation menus on the page.

Return to Contents links.

Following each sub-section you will find a "Return to Contents" List link to help you return to the list of headings without having to scroll back through the page.

Sensible and Comprehensive Link Titles.

All links on this site have been separated from the text and are fully descriptive. All headings are also listed as links in the page contents list. This means that if your assistive technology does not recognise header formatting, you can navigate the page simply by tabbing with no need to waste time with scrolling.

Skip Links.

This site also contains a number of hidden links for screen reader users to allowing them to go to content, return to content, and bypass any sets of repetitive links or information.

Navigation Menus.

Each page has a Site Navigation Links at the bottom, with links to the home-pages of all the main sections in this site. Within the sections, each page also has a submenu with links to all related sub-pages. All menu titles are the only text formatted in html as Heading4. If your assistive technology supports headers, this will allow you to go straight to the navigation menu from any point on the page without scrolling or using links.

Access Keys.

This site supports Access Keys which allow you to jump straight to certain pages from any place in the site. The main navigation menu items are all preceded by their respective access key. These are underlined to help you locate them. To use the Access keys press the alt key and the access key simultaneously to select the link, and then hit enter to go to the page.

We are aware of the ongoing discussion of the value of access keys, as they can overlap with assitive technology keyboard functions. However testing suggests that it is fairly safe to use numerical access keys as we have done with this site. If this presents you with problems, please get in touch with us and we will revise our use of access keys.

This site implements a wide range of accessibility features, including:

• Header formatting
• Hidden audio cues
• Page summaries
• Fully punctuated and hyphenated text, designed for sensible audio rendering
• Accessible contact forms
• Jump links and skip options
• Sensible link titles
• Design that linearises gracefully
• Stylesheet compatibility
• Pages and text that can be fully resized
• Contrast Options
• Left aligned layout
• Numerical Access Keys
• No pop-ups
• Semantic alt tags where images are used

Please note that this list will shortly be expanded into a full section on accessibility, and building usable websites. It will be replaced with a comprehensive breakdown of how, and why, these accessibility features have been implemented to make this site more accessible for you.