Eriginal   [:-)  Accessibility

Accessibility
    "We burn daylight" William Shakespeare  
San Pedro 2205. Photo Credit: Mark O'Connor

 
 

focus Accessibility
Eriginal Ltd tries to keep the needs of its visitors in mind at all times, both in its own website and in those it designs.

All web pages are validated to current coding standards, and at a minimum, meet all priority one checkpoints for accessibility advised by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in its accessibility guidelines. Many, but not all, priority two and three checkpoints have also been met and Eriginal Ltd is committed to further improving its website to meet these other checkpoints.

All websites designed by Eriginal Ltd follow a clear quality process and procedure to ensure, in so far as it is possible, they conform with accessibility guidelines, at a minimum meeting all priority one checkpoints.

focus Access Keys
The Eriginal Ltd website uses access keys. Generally the access key will be the first letter of the page name.

a -
c -
d -
e -
g -
h -
i -
l -
p -
r -
s -
w -
1 -
accessibility
contact
design
examples: portfolio
graphics
home
identity
[linux] hosting
privacy
registration
site map
web databases
Articles

To use the access keys

  • On Windows - hold down the "Alt" key and press the access key
  • On Macintosh - hold down the "Ctrl" and press the access key

focus Text Size
We use relative rather than fixed text sizing which means you can easily change the way the text on this site is displayed to you. If you prefer the text to be larger or smaller then

If you use Internet Explorer

  • Select view from the menu bar
  • Select Text Size
  • Choose the size you require

If you use Netscape

  • Select View from the menu bar
  • Select Increase font
  • Continue selecting "increase font" to continue enlarging the type face


focus Customise Internet Explorer
Some web authors use fixed text sizing in their designs. If you use Internet Explorer this means using the above method to increase the font size will not work in some of the sites you visit. Please refer to our notes below on customising Internet Explorer so you can change the settings and control the way pages are displayed to you to improve their accessibility.


- Adding icons to the toolbar
Move your mouse onto the toolbar and right click to reveal the shortcut menu. Select "Customize..."

Add icons to IE toolbar

This will launch a dialog box where you can select icons to add to your toolbar. On the left hand side of the dialog box there is a list of the available toolbar buttons. Scroll down the list until you reach the A icon [for text] which says "Size". Click onto the icon and then click the Add button. This will move the icon into the right hand side which is the list of current toolbar buttons.

Select icons to add to current toolbar list

Once you've done this click close. The text icon is now added to the toolbar. When you click on it you will have a choice of increasing the text size of the web page.

Icon added to the toolbar

Note: if the author of the web page has used fixed font sizes in the design, i.e. specified the text sizes in pixels, then Internet Explorer will not allow you to change the font size using this technique.

To get around it and be able to access the page you can set a default style for all web pages you visit. This will display the text size and colors you prefer rather than individual styling set by the author.

- Adding a default style
To set a default display for web pages based on your preferences rather than the page authors select "Internet Options" from the Tools menu in Internet Explorer.

Select Internet Options from the Tools Menu

This will open a dialog box, pictured below. Click on the Accessibility button which is circled in the screen shot underneath.

Dialog box. Click Accessibility circled in the screen shot

This will open the Accessibility dialog box as pictured underneath. The box is in two sections. Section one lets you

  1. Ignore colors specified on Web pages.
  2. Ignore font styles specified on web pages
  3. Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages

The second section lets you add your own CSS style sheet so you can define colors etc. You don't need to complete this section, you may be happy to just ignore the font sizes specified on Web pages. By choosing this option it means you gain control over the display of font sizes which the author has defined in fixed terms, i.e. by using pixels to set the font size. Click ok to save your changes to the settings.

The Accessibility dialog box

- Advanced options
You can make some advanced changes to your display settings in Internet Explorer depending on your preferences. Again select "Internet Options" from the Tools menu. Click onto the Advanced tab. Some of the options available to you here are

  • Turn off pictures or videos
  • Turn off sound
  • Use smooth scrolling
  • Enable page transitions
  • Turn off background colors and images for print

Scroll down through the list and untick the items you do not require. When you're finished click OK to save the changes to the settings.

Advanced Tab from the Internet Options dialog box

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