Accessibility
Accessibility is
important to us here at Newham and our website is no exception. We
are committed to ensuring that the service is accessible to
everyone and to offering a positive user experience. By following a
set of guidelines offered by the Web Accessibility Initiative, our
website generally conforms to a AA rating where HTML is used. Here
we detail how this has been achieved:
Language and Layout
This site's layout takes into account users who
are visually impaired or have difficulties using a mouse and is
designed to be compatible with screen reading software such as JAWS
and Homepage Reader for Windows. It also has been designed to work
properly over a range of screen resolutions and browsers.
The site content is also written in plain English and in a style
that is straightforward and easy to understand.
Text Size
Some users might find
screen text easier to read by increasing the size at which text is
displayed. This can be done by using the text control icons at the
top of every page. Simply click on the larger A to increase the
text size or the smaller A to reduce its size.
Alternately, you can change the size of text by holding down the
ctrl key on the bottom row of the keyboard, whilst moving the
scroll wheel on the mouse up or down.
Colour
We have not used colour to
highlight important information within text and have taken care to
ensure that there is a sufficient contrast between the foreground
and background colour combinations.
However if you have difficulty reading the content of the site, you
can reverse the contrast so that that light coloured text appears
on a dark background. To do this click on the contrast options in
the top right corner of every page.
Images
All images have been given
a text equivalent to provide a meaningful explanation of what the
image is about. The description can be read by hovering the cursor
over the image or read aloud if you are using a screen reader to
browse the webpage rather than view.
Links
Hyperlinks are highlighted
using descriptive and meaningful text rather than instructions to
'click here' or 'download now'. A link to an external website will
also open up in a new browser window.
PDFs
Many of our reports and documents on the website are in Portable
Document Format (PDF), which can only be read by using a software
such as Adobe Reader. If you do not have Adobe Reader, you can
download it
for free from the Adobe website.