Accessibility

The Cornwall Blind Association is committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience - regardless of ability or browsing technology and including those who have visual, hearing, motor and cognitive impairments. The following outlines the features and guides that have been put in place.

W3C Guidelines

The website has been validated against the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) checks for HTML and CSS and is valid for level 1 or 'A' standard. In a site where content is constantly being added this may cause errors to occur therefore this validation will be checked at regular instances. If you find a page that does not validate please email Cornwall Blind Association and we will rectify the error as soon as possible.

Access keys

Access keys provide a way to navigate to some of the main sections of our site using a simple set of keyboard shortcut keys. They can be used to jump directly to different sections of the site without having to move your mouse at all.

The following information details each of the keyboard shortcut commands available to you.

[C] Skip to content
[M] Skip to menu
[S] Search
[0] Accessibility details (this page)
[1] Home page

How to use Access Keys

This depends on your operating system and the type and version of your browser:

PC running Windows using Internet Explorer version 5 and above:

press and hold down the ALT key
press the Access Key of your choice
release both keys
press ENTER

PC running Windows using Internet Explorer version 5 and above with Hal Screen Reader*:

press and hold down the ALT key
press the Access Key of your choice
release both keys
press and hold down the ALT key again
press ENTER

(Note that this is the default in Hal. If you have changed your configuration, the process may be different.)

PC running Windows using Internet Explorer version 4.x:

press and hold down the ALT key
press the Access Key of your choice

PC running Windows using Netscape version 6 and above, Mozilla or Firefox:

press and hold the ALT key
press the Access Key of your choice

PC or Macintosh computer running Windows using Opera 7+:

press and hold down the Shift key
press the Escape key
release both keys
press the Access Key of your choice

Macintosh computer using Internet Explorer v5+, Safari, Omniweb or Firefox

press and hold down the Control key
press the Access Key of your choice
Please note that Access Keys are not supported by earlier versions of the above web browsers.

These Access Keys conform to the UK Government Access Keys Standard. We do not use any Access Keys in addition to the ones detailed above as we have found that they are incompatible with a number of browsers and assistive technologies and until this issue is resolved we are unwilling to risk using them.

Scrolling

Depending on your machine and setting some pages will contain vertical scrolling content. This unfortunately poses problems for some users. The arrow keys on your keyboard as well as the 'up' and 'down' arrow keys should help with scrolling. On these pages you should also find links taking you back to the top of the page.

Browser Accessibility Options

You can specify the font sizes, styles and colours, and foreground and background colours of web pages displayed on your computer, even if the person creating the web page has already specified these. You can also set the colour you would like to indicate links in web pages.

This could be useful if you have impaired vision or find certain colours or contrasts easier to read.

You can set Internet Explorer to use the fonts and colours of your choice, or to use the Windows 'default' colours and fonts.

Microsoft Internet Explorer for PC

Open Internet Explorer Web Browser
Select 'Tools' from the menu at the top of your window
From the options which appear, select 'Internet options...'.
Click the 'General' tab
Click the button marked 'Accessibility'
To change the font size, tick the checkbox labelled 'Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages'
To remove background and font colours, tick the checkbox labelled 'Ignore colours specified on web pages'
Click OK (and again if necessary)
Select 'View' from the menu at the top of the window
Select 'Text Size'
Select desired text size

Microsoft Internet Explorer for Apple Mac

Open Internet Explorer Web Browser.
Select the "edit" menu at the top of the window.
From the options menu which appears, select "preferences".
Click "web content"
Deselect the button labelled "show style sheets"
Return to the list of preferences
Click on "web browser"
Select "language/fonts"
Select the font size you require

Instructions for users of Netscape Navigator Text:

Select 'Edit' from the menu at the top of the window and choose 'Preferences'
Open the Appearance group and click on 'Fonts' category
Next to 'For the encoding' should read Western to tell the computer which types of letters and symbols to use. Select 18 from 'size'
Next to the Variable Width Font field there is a drop down box - select 'Arial'. The Fixed Width Font box should read 'Courier New' - select 18 from 'size'
To override the fonts used by the web page author, select 'use my default fonts overriding document specified fonts'
Click on 'OK'

Colours:

Select 'Edit' from the menu at the top of the window and choose 'Preferences'.
Open the Appearance group and click on the 'Colours' category.
Select a colour button to change the colours of text, background, unvisited links, or visited links
To override the colours used by the web page author, select 'Always use my colours, overriding document'
Click on 'OK'

Downloadable documents

A number of downloadable documents available within this site are in Portable Document Format (often referred to as PDF). In order to view a PDF document, you need free software called Adobe Acrobat Reader.

Adobe Acrobat Reader can be downloaded from the Adobe web site by following the link below:

Adobe - Acrobat Reader

If you use a screen reading program which synthesizes text as audible speech you may experience difficulty reading PDF files. The Access Adobe web site provides online tools to convert PDF documents into standard HTML or ASCII text. The site can be visited via the link below:

Adobe - Conversion Tools

Useful links

The following websites will have useful advice and information about web accessibility.

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