Accessibility

HGCA is committed to making the information and resources that it provides via the web accessible to all users. We aim to be standards compliant and follow general principles of usability and universal design, which should help all visitors to this website.

This central site for HGCA is intended to meet at least level 1 (A) of the W3C’s Website Accessibility Initiative (WAI) Guidelines, For more information about the WAI Guidelines see: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (external website).

HGCA hope to make our site as inclusive as possible, and also to comply with UK legislation including the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) as amended by the Special Education Needs and Disability Act (2001).

We intend to continue improving our accessibility, so if you have any difficulty accessing this site and require further help, or if you have any suggestions to help improve our accessibility, please please contact HGCA at[email protected]

Changing the settings in your web browser

Some options are common to all browsers – such as using the keyboard to zoom in or out on a web page:

• Press CTRL + PLUS SIGN (+) to zoom in, or CTRL + HYPHEN (-) to zoom out.

Other options will vary from browser to browser – here’s a guide below on how to use these ready-installed features in the most common browsers today:

Change text size

With Microsoft Internet Explorer you can make Web pages easier to see by changing the size of text used on them. If you change the text size, graphics and controls will remain in their original size but the text size will change. If the text size was explicitly set by the person who created the Web page you must override it.

With Microsoft Internet Explorer you can make Web pages easier to read by magnifying the page (zooming in). If you zoom in, everything on the Web page will be magnified (including text, images, and controls). Zooming will change the magnification of the Web site, regardless of the Web site’s formatting

IE users: select Tools > Internet Options > General tab: Accessibility button > Ignore colors / font styles / font sizes

Page zoom

The Full Page Zoom feature in Firefox allows web surfers to zoom the whole page, including images and other content besides text. (In previous versions of Firefox only text would be zoomed.) Now a simple switch on the View/Zoom sub menu allows you to switch whether you want the whole page to zoom, or to revert to the old behavior. Vision impaired surfers have different needs, and Firefox addresses those needs by offering both features in one browser, on all supported platforms.

Firefox users: select Tools > Options > General > Fonts & Colors

If you’re browsing the web on your own computer, you might also consider installing additional accessibility extensions to Firefox that can greatly improve the way that you use and view the Internet. Not all of the Firefox extensions were made for accessibility purposes, but they are all helpful in one way or another for those who may have specific needs in how web content is presented to them and how they interact with it.

To read about all the accessibility extensions for the latest version of Firefox, visit: www.accessfirefox.org/Firefox_Accessibility_Extensions.php

Page zoom

– Keyboard shortcuts (Windows): Ctrl++ or Ctrl–
– Click Page > Zoom > Larger or Smaller as necessary. To see the web page in its original layout, select Normal.

If you find yourself squinting all the time, try changing the default font size for all web pages.

Page zoom

1. Click the View button in the lower, right side of the screen
2. Select on the slider how much you would like to zoom

Use Opera without a mouse
www.opera.com/browser/tutorials/nomouse/

Full Page zoom

To add the Zoom button to your toolbar, simply choose Customize toolbar from the View menu and drag the button onto your toolbar.

You can choose to zoom in on only the text when you take a closer look at a web page.

If you find that text on some websites is too small to read (such as photo captions or fine print) Safari can increase the font size to make it more legible. Just set the minimum font size in the Advanced pane of Safari preferences.

To read about all the accessibility extensions for the latest version of Firefox, visit: www.apple.com/safari/features.html

Using the keyboard instead of a mouse

Rather than using a mouse to select text and move around within a web page, you can use standard navigation keys on your keyboard — HOME, END, PAGE UP, PAGE DOWN, and the arrow keys (this feature is also sometimes known as ‘Caret Browsing’, named after the caret or cursor). This makes it easier to select, copy, and paste text to another document with a keyboard instead of a mouse.