Accessibility

Our accessibility section covers:
Accessibility statement

We are committed to enabling as many people as possible access to our website. By improving the accessibility and usability of our site, we are seeking to meet the requirements of all our users.

We are currently working across our web presence to ensure that we comply with all of the priority 1(A) accessibility checkpoints as established by the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). The WAI promotes usability and accessibility for people with disabilities and promotes good practice amongst the web community.

We will be making continual improvements to our websites aiming to fulfill priority 2 (AA) checkpoints.

We realise the importance of ensuring this site is accessible to all our visitors. To this end we commissioned Shaw Trust to undertake an Accessibility Audit in 2011 and the site was awarded the Shaw Trust ‘Accessible’ rating. The site has since been updated and we intend to undertake this audit again once changes have been made.
About the Web Accessibility Initiative

The Web Accessibility Initiative promotes usability and accessibility for people with disabilities and promotes good practice amongst the web community
Access keys

The UK Government Access Keys Standard has been applied to this site. These provide a keyboard shortcut for users wishing to go directly to specific parts of the site and help those who do not use a pointing device, such as a mouse. To use the access keys press "Alt" then the number, then press your enter key.

A subset of the standard has been used and the access keys are defined as follows:

  • S = Skip navigation
  • 1 = Home page
  • 2 = News page
  • 3 = Site map
  • 6 = Help
  • 7 = Contacts
  • 8 = Disclaimer
  • 0 = Key details

Visitors using recent versions of screen readers can navigate using the following keystrokes:

  • H to cycle forwards through the headings
  • Shift + H to cycle backwards through the headings
  • 1 to navigate to the next level 1 heading (or a number between 1 and 6 to navigate to the next heading on this level)
  • Shift + 1 to navigate to the previous level 1 heading (or a number between 1 and 6 to navigate to the previous heading on this level)
  • INSERT + F6 to provide a list of all headings

In Opera, the following keys can be used to navigate headings:

  • S to cycle forwards through the headings
  • W to cycle backwards through the headings
Alternative text

All images on this site are accompanied by a brief alternative text which, where appropriate, identifies an image or its function. This alternative text (alt-text) is generally only visible when the browser's automatic image loading feature is turned off.

Those in purely decorative graphics or used for layout include null ALT attributes
Links

All text links are written so that they make sense when read out of context.
PDFs

Most complex Adobe® Acrobat® Portable Document Format (PDF) files on this site are tagged to allow basic accessibility. Simple PDFs should not represent an accessibility problem.

For more information about PDF accessibility see the Adobe website accessibility section.
Text size

The font used on our website can be changed in size in your browser settings to your own preference.

  • In Microsoft Internet Explorer choose View/ then Text Size and select the size you require
  • In Firefox choose View then Text Size/Increase or Decrease
  • In Safari choose View then Make Text Bigger or Make Text Smaller
  • In Opera choose View then Zoom and then a percentage

Further information on increasing the text size in your web browser, operating system and applications such as Word , Open Office Writer and Adobe Acrobat can be found on the following 'My Web My Way' pages on the BBC website.
Changing colours

The colours on our site are normally controlled using cascading style sheets. However, users can change the site's background colour, which can be particularly useful for those who rely on magnification technology as a white background can produce an uncomfortable glare. It is also possible to change the colour of body text on the site.

Further information on how you can change text and background colours in your browser and operating system to better suit your needs can be found on the following 'My Web My Way' pages on the BBC website.
Visual design

This site uses cascading style sheets for visual layout. If your browser or browsing device does not support style sheets at all, the content of each page should still be readable.​

Reporting Problems

If you have any difficulty viewing the content or are experiencing problems accessing any area of this site, please contact the UK SBS webteam, giving us details of the problem so we can try to address it.

Further accessibility help

For more information and a comprehensible guide explaining the many ways you can change your browser, computer, keyboard and mouse settings to make the web more accessible to you, please visit the BBC's My Web My Way pages.