We are committed to making sure that our services are available to everyone. We have aimed to design our website to make it as accessible as possible while remaining visually interesting and easy to use.
We have included a number of features that are detailed below.
Clear language
We aim to explain things as clearly as possible using simple language that you can understand.
Images and alt tags
Where images are used we have added text alternatives in ALT tags. This means you will still know what the image is meant to convey if it doesn't load, you are browsing with images switched off or you are using assistive technology such as a screen reader.
Videos
Wherever possible, we include subtitles and captions in our online videos. We use YouTube to host videos, which has a number of accessibility features, including the ability to increase the size and language of the subtitles.
Documents
Most of the documents published on our website are PDF (portable document format) files. PDFs are accessed using a PDF file viewer such as Adobe Reader which is free to download.
Sometimes we are required to publish a document in another format such as Excel CVS for open data. In such cases we also publish a PDF version of the file.
Resizable text
Follow the steps below to alter the font size and make it easier to read.
Internet Explorer
- select view from the menu at the top of your browser window
- then text size from the menu
- choose the size you require
Chrome
On your keyboard hold down the CTRL key and press the plus (+) key to make the text larger. Use the minus (-) key to make the text smaller
Or
- select the menu button on the browser toolbar
- then settings
- select show advanced settings
- in the web content section, use the font size dropdown to make adjustments
Firefox
On your keyboard hold down the CTRL key and press the plus (+) key to make the text larger. Use the minus (-) key to make the text smaller
Or
- right click top bar and select menu bar. The menu bar should appear
- select view on the menu bar
- then zoom
- choose zoom text only
- then select view menu
- select zoom
- choose zoom in to make the text larger or zoom out to make the font smaller
Apple Safari (All versions)
On your keyboard hold down the Apple key and press the plus (+) key to make the text larger. Use the minus (-) key to make text smaller
Or
- select view to highlight the menu bar
- press the right arrow key to open the view dropdown menu
- tick zoom text only
- choose zoom in to make the text larger or zoom out to make the font smaller (in older versions of Safari you need to choose make text bigger or make text smaller)
Assistive technology
We encourage our users to customise their own computer with assistive technologies to suit their individual needs. For example you may like to change the colour scheme or have the site content spoken to you.
If you are not sure how to do this we recommend you visit BBC My Web, My Way.