Accessibility Policy

Website Accessibility

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 browser’s built-in documentation.

Internet Explorer (IE)

To change font sizes in IE10-IE11:

  1. Press the Alt key to display the menu bar.
  2. Tap or click View, and then click Text Size.
  3. Choose to make text larger or smaller than the size currently on the screen.

To change colour and font settings in IE:

  1. From the Tools menu, choose Internet Options
  2. On the General tab 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 specified by websites

To 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

To change font sizes in Firefox:

  1. To zoom in on a page, click the Menu button (top right) and use the + and – buttons to resize. This will resize both text and images
  2. If you wish to resize text only, press the Alt key, click the View menu, select Zoom and then select Zoom Text Only.  Now repeat step 1 – this time only text will resize, with images remaining the same size.

To 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.
  4. To select fonts, within the Fonts & Colors section, select the default font and size from the drop-down menus
  5. 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
  6. To select colours, within the Fonts & Colors section, click the Colors button and use the dialog that appears to select a colour palette that best suits you
  7. To enforce your colour selection, untick the checkbox Allow pages to choose their own colours, instead of my selections above

To disable images in Firefox:

In Firefox 23 and later there is no user-friendly way to disable image loading – however it can be done by carefully following these steps:

  1. Type “about:config” in the address bar and press Enter.
  2. When presented with the warning message, ‘This might void your warranty’, click the button labeled “I’ll be careful, I promise!”
  3. Search for permissions.default.image or scroll down until you find it
  4. Right-click on it, select Modify and change the value to 2 (The default is 1).
  5. To reverse the changes and allow images to load, set permissions.default.image value to 1 using the same method

In Firefox 22 and earlier:

  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

Google Chrome

To change font sizes and settings in Chrome:

  1. Click the Menu button (top right)
  2. Click Settings (near bottom of menu)
  3. Click Show Advanced Settings (bottom of page)
  4. Scroll down to Web Content section
  5. Choose font size using the dropdown menu
  6. For more detailed control of typeface and sizes, click the Customise Fonts button

To disable images in Chrome:

  1. Click the Menu button (top right)
  2. Click Settings (near bottom of menu)
  3. Click Show Advanced Settings (bottom of page)
  4. Scroll down to Privacy section
  5. Click Content Settings button
  6. In Images section, select “Do not show any images”

Opera

To change font sizes and settings in Opera:

  1. Select Settings > Preferences > Advanced > Fonts and select an item in the list and click “Choose“.
  2. You may have to enable “My fonts and colors” in Author mode or User mode to make font changes for webpage elements work.
  3. If text appears too small on certain pages, increase the minimum font size to ensure readability.

To disable images in Opera:

  1. On the right of the status bar, click the arrow next to the zoom slider.
  2. Select “Show images” to toggle options. You can opt to display all images (Show Images), no images at all (No Images), or images that have already been cached only (Cached Images).
  3. An alternate menu path to achieve the above is: Settings > Preferences > Webpages.
  4. If you want to disable animated images, such as GIF and SVG animations, and display them as ordinary graphics, go to Settings > Quick Preferences and uncheck Enable Animated Images. To enable them, check this option.
  5. An alternate menu path to achieve the above is: Settings > Preferences > Advanced > Content and uncheck the “Enable Animated Images” checkbox.

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 this 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.