The Adam Smith College, Fife :: Accessibility Guidelines

Accessibility Guidelines

Adam Smith College have tried to ensure that this site is as easy to use and accessible for all users. Numerous techniques have been incorporated into the site design to improve the navigation and accesibility of the site and it's contents.

Browsers

Ideally, the Adam Smith College site functions best with a modern browser or similar assistive device. In most cases they are more customisable and have additional enhancements compared with older browsers for accessibility and web standard reasons. For instance, Netscape Navigator 6.0 and greater can interpret language abbreviations into their full meaning. This is most useful for screen readers as they would normally translate any abbreviations into garbled speech.

The site is currently evolving and being developed and as such support for certain browsers may change through time. Currently, this site has been tested using Internet Explorer 6 and Mozilla Firefox 1.5

If you've used this site successfully on a browser not mentioned above, please let us know via the webmaster. Likewise, if your having difficulties accessing or using this site with a particular device or browser, let us know what difficulties your experiencing.

Access Keys

A feature used to improve ease of navigation is the use of Access Keys. These are shortcut keys used to gain instant access to important or common parts of the site. The current list of Access Keys on the site is:

Number 0 takes you to the website homepage.

Number 1 takes you to the Courses page.

Number 2 takes you to the College Info page.

Number 3 takes you to the Student Info page.

Number 4 takes you to the International page.

Letter N for the News and Events page.

Letter C for the college contact details.

Letter J for details on current job vacancies.

Letter P for details on projects that the college is currently involved with.

Letter S for details on Scholarships offered by the college.

Letter L for help and advice on how to access the college's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).

To use the Access Keys on your system, please follow these steps as they vary slightly across browsers and operating systems:

In Internet Explorer 6 on PC, use Alt plus the Access Key then Enter.
In Netscape 6 on PC, use Alt plus Access Key to activate the shortcut.
In Netscape 6 or Internet Explorer 5 on Mac, use Ctrl plus Access Key.

Please consult your software help option for information regarding other platforms.

This site has been designed so that the user can control the size of the textual information contained witin the site. Modern browsers have the necessary functionality built-in to allow you to change the text size. Changing the text size differs for each browser. Instructions on how to change the text size in some common browsers is shown below.

Some changes require you to refresh/reload the page before they take affect. These changes apply to ALL websites, not just this one.

Internet Explorer 5.5 and above

From the menu bar at the top, select the View menu.
Select Text Size
There are 5 choices, ranging from smallest to largest, with medium being the default.
Select your chosen text size.

Mozilla Firefox

From the menu bar at the top, select the View menu.
Select Text Size
There are 3 choices, increase, decrease and normal.
Select one of these option to change the size of the text.
Repeat if necessary.

Netscape Navigator 6

From the menu bar at the top, pull down the Edit menu.
Select Preferences.
Click on Fonts, which is listed under Appearances.
Choose a font size from the options listed.
Click on the desired font size from the pull-down menu.
Click Ok.
You have many options when it comes to font size. Try a couple of different sizes in order to determine the best for you.

External Applications

Sometimes, certain areas of our site requires special plug-ins. Without them, the information cannot be conveyed in the same manner or in a relatively small file size by using traditional web languages.

Whilst the majority of today's Internet connected computers may already have these plug-ins, not all do or some may not be the latest manufacturer's versions. In downloading the latest versions, which are free, users will be able to take advantage of latest enhancements for file reduction and accessibility issues, like speech-accessible content in the latest Macromedia Flash player.

Please follow the links below to the manufactures' homepages of external browser plug-ins that are currently used in the Adam Smith College web site.

Problems?

If you have trouble accessing any section of the website for whatever reason, we welcome your feedback. Please send an email to webmaster@adamsmith.ac.uk explaining your problem.