In seeking to establish an appropriate benchmark against which to measure the effectiveness of its compliance, City & Guilds and AQA will observe the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, recommended as part of the W3C/WIA programme.
In practice, this means that the site should adhere to the World Wide Web Consortium’s
Web Accessibility Initiative’s guidelines for content creation as far as is possible (at least to Level 1 as defined in the guidelines). City & Guilds and AQA have specified a minimum level of compliance as being Level 2 – and, wherever possible, aim to exceed it and achieve Level 3 compliance with the standards.
Achieving this requires the use of a number of techniques, primarily the creation of site templates using semantically-oriented markup, and the use of Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) for layout and presentation. The site should validate against Web standards and all content should be (as far as is practical) accessible on a non-graphical browser.
City & Guilds and AQA have undertaken the following actions to ensure equal access to our services from our website:
- The standard font used throughout the site is Arial for easy legibility.
- Wherever possible, we use live text instead of graphics to reduce the download time of pages and increase your control.
- No information is exclusively conveyed using colour. This doesn't mean that colours are not used to organise information, instead it means there are also other, non-colour dependent ways of doing so.
- Our pages are designed so that they are without horizontal scrollbars when they are viewed at a screen resolution of 800 x 600 pixels.
- All images, where appropriate, have an alternative text attribute. This means that when an image is conveying important information its content is described with an alternative text.
- Where individual features make use of functions that do not comply with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines we have made sure that there are alternative routes provided to the information.
- Style of navigation remains consistent through the websites.
- We are committed to a process of on-going improvement and are working to ensure all older content is made compliant with the provisions of the DDA and that all new content is developed under the guidelines outlined above.
Text size
Some users might find the site easier to read by increasing the size at which text is displayed. To do this you can adjust your browser's settings by going to the View menu, then select 'text size' or 'text zoom' or 'zoom' and increase the size of the text.
- On Microsoft Internet Explorer Hold Alt + V Then press X followed by Return (Enter).
- On Netscape Hold Alt + V Then press Z followed by 0 (zero) (or replace the 0 with 2 for extra large text).
- On Opera Hold Alt + V Then press Z followed by 0 (zero). Opera also allows you to press the + and - on the keypad to increase and decrease the size respectively.
Changing colours
Changing the site's background colour can be particularly useful for users who rely on magnification technology as white can produce an uncomfortable glare. It is also possible to change the colour of body text on the site. Both can be achieved by changing preferences in your browser.
Problems accessing the site
If you have difficulty accessing the site or have any comments or feedback on how we can improve your online experience, please do not hesitate to contact us on queries@diplomainfo.org.uk.