We are committed to ensuring that this website is accessible to the widest possible range of people. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the accessibility of this site, or if you have difficulty using any part of it, please contact us.
How do I change text size?
If you find the text on this site is too small, you can change it easily using a variety of methods.
If your mouse has a scroll wheel you can, in most browsers, increase and decrease the size of text by holding down the CTRL key and using the scroll wheel on your mouse. Alternatively Internet Explorer, Mozilla based browsers such as Firefox and WebKit based browsers such as Safari on the Mac and Chrome on the PC have menus to allow you to set the text size manually:
- Internet Explorer 4: choose View>Internet Options…>Accessibility… and check the ignore font sizes specified on web pages option. Click OK, OK, and then you can alter the text size using the View>Text Size option
- Internet Explorer (version 5 and later): choose Tools>Internet Options…>Accessibility… and check the ignore font sizes specified on web pages option. Click OK, OK, and then you can alter the text size using the View>Text Size option
- All other browsers should be able to resize the text directly from the menu bar. Please see your specific browser help pages if you are having difficulty
Images
All images on this site are accompanied by a brief alternative text (also known as alt-text) which describes the image or its function as appropriate. Those in purely decorative graphics or used for layout include null alt attributes.
How do I change 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:
If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, go to the Tools menu, select Internet Options, select Colours and make changes to text and background colours in the Colours panel.
If you use Mozilla Firefox, go to the ‘Tools’ menu, select ‘Options’, then click on the ‘Content’ tab and select the ‘Font and Colours’ button. From here you can override the colours used on this site by ticking the boxes marked ‘Always use my: Fonts’ and ‘Always use my: Colors’. You can also specify which colours you prefer text and links to be displayed in, as well as which background colour. In addition, you can choose the colours of links to sites you have previously visited and those you have not.
How do I listen to this site?
There are a number of ways in which you can listen to this website. Your computer’s operating system should have a built-in speech function which will read your screen aloud. To find out how you can use this functionality, please visit the BBC accessibility guide. If you use Google Chrome as a web browser you can use their free app, ChromeVox. There are also other third party screen reader software tools available.
Other languages
We have added some translation tools to this website so that you can browse in the language of your choice. These tools are available in the top left of the site. We currently offer translations in Bengali, Chinese, Czech, French, Polish and Urdu. Please contact us if you think another language needs to be made available.
Contact us
If you have any problems accessing any information on the site, please contact us and we will try to fix the problem or provide the information in an appropriate format.
Useful links
The following websites have useful advice and information about web accessibility.
