Accessibility policy
We take a pragmatic approach to accessibility. Although we believe passionately that the web should be accessible to all, we also know that producing a highly accessible site can compromise the design in some cases. However, we are convinced that good design and accessibility are not mutually exclusive and have endeavoured to demonstrate this here.
This site complies with all accessibility guidelines outlined by the Web Accessibility Initiative with one exception:
3.4 Use relative rather than absolute units in markup language attribute values and style sheet property values.
Although we have used relative values for all fonts, so allowing the user to increase and decrease font size, we have used absolute values for layout. We have done this to ensure that we can maximise the visual impact of the site. We believe that this one small compromise is worth making to ensure the best all round site. However, in order to avoid making the site inaccessible to the small minority of users for whom absolute values for layout would cause problems, we give users the ability to strip out the design elements of the site and view the Text only version.
Font sizes
Users can change font sizes to make the text more readable by using their browser's text size settings . However, since it is our experience that few users know how to do this, we have also provided a facility on each site page enabling users to change the font size. This facility is displayed as follows.
Access keys
This site also offers keyboard shortcuts, often known as access keys, to various links on the site. Access keys help those who find a mouse difficult to use. Although access keys work differently in different browsers they are generally accessed by pressing and holding down the ALT key (CTRL for the Macs) while also pressing the defined access key. In Internet Explorer it is also then necessary to press the "return" key in order to activate the link.
The access keys for this site are as follows:
- A :About accessibility on this site
- P :Print this entire report
- I :Introduction
- S :Scope
- F :Findings
- T :Statistics
- C :Conclusions
- U :Contact the authors
- 1 :About Headscape
- 3 :Higher Education Accessibility Article
- 4 :Web accessibility plan
- 5 :Accessify.com
- 6 :Web Accessibility Initiative
- + :Increase the font size
- - :Decrease the font size