About the Site Accessibility Statement

We are committed to making our website as accessible as possible to blind and partially sighted users, and to people with disabilities.

For this reason, the design of our site includes a number of accessibility features:

General

The purpose of the site is that it is a gateway to health information and therefore leads to other websites, which will open in a new window. Although, accessibility guidelines are not in favour of this, it was felt that it was important to keep users within the site.

All pages include a hidden accessibility feature, noticeable only to users of text-only and audio browsers, which enables the user to "skip over" the main page navigation buttons (rather than having to tab through them manually at the start of every page). Thus, the user can immediately go to the main content of the page.

Although colour is used to make the page more visually appealing all pages should be viewable in grayscale.

We try to avoid the use of other proprietary publishing formats browser-specific markup, and other technologies which can create accessibility barriers.

Standards Compliance

The home page and the majority of the pages are Bobby AAA approved, complying with all priority 1, 2, and 3 guidelines of the W3 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Those that do not have Bobby approval, would have required a feature that would have been detrimental to the website or the database.

The NHS Identity Guidelines were also consulted.

Cascading Style Sheets

This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout.

The stylesheet uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers. For example, if you're using Internet Explorer, you can make your default text size larger under the "View" menu, "Text Size", "Larger" (or "Largest").

If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the content of each page is still readable.

Access Keys

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key.

The navigation bar on all pages has the following keys:

• Access key H : Home Page
• Access key A : About the Site
• Access key B : Browse
• Access key S : Search
• Access key N : Nominate a Site
• Access key C : Contact
• Access key U : User Guide
• Access key M : Site Map

In addition the Search Pages have the following keys:

• Access key T : Text Input Box
• Access key G : Go Button
• Access key R : Reset Button

Tab Index

All links, form controls and objects have an appropriate tab index, allowing the user to quickly tab through the interactive elements of a page.

Links

Wherever possible, links are written to make sense out of context. Many browsers (such as JAWS and Opera) can extract the list of links on a page and allow the user to browse the list, separately from the page.

Where the same link phrase refers to a different URL (e.g. View Details) a title has been added.

Images

All images used in our site are given appropriate alternative text descriptions ("ALT texts"), as required by internationally-recognised Web accessibility guidelines.

Form Controls

All Form Elements have been labelled properly and have an appropriate tab index. All form controls have a default value. Some access devices will miss a form control if there is no text in it; that is, they will not tell the user the control is there or allow the user to input data. Placing default text in the control forces the access devices to see the control.

Multi-Select Box

In Internet Explorer 5 and other browsers, you cannot make multiple selections in a list box using the traditional method of pressing the Ctrl key and the Spacebar. A workaround has been discovered for this problem. Press Tab to move into the list box. Press Shift + F8 to move into Multi-Select mode. Then you can use the UP and Down Arrow keys to move through the list, and use the Spacebar to make your selections. Press Shift + F8 again when you are finished.

Frames and Tables

We do not use frames and try to avoid the use of tables for layout purposes. Where tables are used summary information on the purpose of the table is provided and the table should still make sense when linearised.

Accessibility Issues

If you encounter any accessibility problems when using this site, you can contact us via the Contact Page.

Acknowledgements

We acknowledge gratefully the help of Ann Hamilton of the Resource Unit for the Visually Impaired based within Glasgow City Libraries' Mitchell Library in highlighting accessibility issues on our site.