The Mid Suffolk District Council
website has been designed to be accessible for all users, including
those with disabilities.
Guidelines
We have tried to follow the guidelines
set down by the Web Accessibility
Initiative (WAI), part of the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and we
have also looked at good practice on many websites, including other
Local Government sites.
The list of guidelines we attempt to
follow include:
- use of a cascading
style sheet to layout the page and to apply styling
- use images only where
necessary
- where used, images will
contain alternative text (alt tag), and a long description
(longdesc tag) if required
- large images will be
linked to, with an icon ( ) to show it is an image, and an
indication of the file size and format
- linked text will make
sense when read out of context
- headings will be
correctly nested
- tables will only be
used for tabular data, and will have clear column headings
- no frames will be
used
- the pages will be
available in a text only version, and
- where possible, each
page will have a similar layout to keep the navigation
constant.
Text Only Version
Our current method for 'text only'
pages uses cookies, so in order for the 'text only' pages to be
available, you will need to enable cookies on your browser. You may
also find that if you switch between the 'text only' and 'full
image' versions and return to a page that has already been viewed,
it may appear as it was previous viewed. To remedy this, either
refresh the page, or set your browser to refresh the page each time
it is loaded.
Font Size
Our website uses a variety of font
sizes in order to highlight the main features, and to help get as
much information onto the page as possible. Sometimes this font can
appear too small, so one of the ways of making the information
clearer is to adjust the text size using your browser.
Increasing the text size will make it easier to read, whilst
reducing the text size will enable you to see more of the webpage
without scrolling down. The following instructions show how
to change the default font size for some of the most common
browsers:
Internet Explorer 5+
At the top of your browser window
click on the option marked 'View' and you will see a menu.
Select 'Text Size' and a sub-menu will appear, showing the items
'Largest', 'Larger', 'Medium', 'Smaller', and 'Smallest'.
Your current selected text size will be marked. From here you
can select a new size by clicking the appropriate item.
Netscape Navigator 4.x
Selecting 'View' from your browser
window will show a menu where there are two items labelled
'Increase Font' and 'Decrease Font'. Select the appropriate
action to either increase or decrease the text size. There is
also a shortcut available by holding down the control key (labelled
'Ctrl') and then pressing ']' to increase the font size or '[' to
decrease the font size.
Netscape 6+ or Mozilla
Select 'View' from your browser window
and you will see a menu where there is an item labeled 'Text Zoom',
and a percentage in brackets. If you select this item a sub-menu
will give you a number of options for changing your font
size. There is also a shortcut available by holding down the
control key (labelled 'Ctrl') and then pressing '+' to increase the
font size or '-' to decrease the font size.
Other Browsers
If you have a different browser from
those mentioned above, please refer to the browsers' help
files. If you are still unable to find out how to change the
font size, please contact the webmaster, and we will try to find
out how it can be done.