Accessibility

Browser Accessibility Options

You can specify the font sizes, styles and colours, and foreground and background colours of web pages displayed on your computer, even if the person creating the web page has already specified these. You can also set the colour you would like to indicate links in web pages.

This could be useful if you have impaired vision or find certain colours or contrasts easier to read.

You can set Internet Explorer to use the fonts and colours of your choice, or to use the Windows 'default' colours and fonts.

The links below will take you to step by step guidelines for adjusting text sizes and colours on your screen.

Microsoft Internet Explorer for PC

Open Internet Explorer Web Browser
Select 'Tools' from the menu at the top of your window
From the options which appear, select 'Internet options...'.
Click the 'General' tab
Click the button marked 'Accessibility'
To change the font size, tick the checkbox labelled 'Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages'
To remove background and font colours, tick the checkbox labelled 'Ignore colours specified on web pages'
Click OK (and again if necessary)
Select 'View' from the menu at the top of the window
Select 'Text Size'
Select desired text size

Microsoft Internet Explorer for Apple Mac

Open Internet Explorer Web Browser.
Select the "edit" menu at the top of the window.
From the options menu which appears, select "preferences".
Click "web content"
Deselect the button labelled "show style sheets"
Return to the list of preferences
Click on "web browser"
Select "language/fonts"
Select the font size you require

Instructions for users of Netscape Navigator Text:

Select 'Edit' from the menu at the top of the window and choose 'Preferences'
Open the Appearance group and click on 'Fonts' category
Next to 'For the encoding' should read Western to tell the computer which types of letters and symbols to use. Select 18 from 'size'
Next to the Variable Width Font field there is a drop down box - select 'Arial'. The Fixed Width Font box should read 'Courier New' - select 18 from 'size'
To override the fonts used by the web page author, select 'use my default fonts overriding document specified fonts'
Click on 'OK'

Colours:

Select 'Edit' from the menu at the top of the window and choose 'Preferences'.
Open the Appearance group and click on the 'Colours' category.
Select a colour button to change the colours of text, background, unvisited links, or visited links
To override the colours used by the web page author, select 'Always use my colours, overriding document'
Click on 'OK'

Access Keys

There are Access Keys (keyboard shortcuts) available on this site.

Windows, press ALT + Access Key then Enter on your keyboard.
Macintosh, press Control + AccessKey.

Access Key 1 - Home page
Access Key 8 - Terms and Conditions
Access Key 9 - Feedback Form
Access Key 0 - Accessibility (this page)

Downloadable Documents

The downloadable documents available within this site are in Portable Document Format (often referred to as PDF). In order to view a PDF document, you need free software called Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Adobe Acrobat Reader can be downloaded from the Adobe web site by following the link below:

Adobe - Acrobat Reader

If you use a screen reading program which synthesizes text as audible speech you may experience difficulty reading PDF files. The Access Adobe web site provides online tools to convert PDF documents into standard HTML or ASCII text. The site can be visited via the link below:

Adobe - Conversion Tools