This site has been designed to ensure the best possible
accessibility for users on various systems and devices. See below for
what features the site encorporates, and also how you can use your PC
to improve Internet accessibility.
Design
The Performance Associates website employs the following design features to ensure the best possible accessibility:
- Our website uses simple information architecture with
uniform navigation and reliable headings throughout. Content layout and
graphical design are consistent on every page.
- All of our
web pages are scalable. This means that you can change the size of the
font by changing the settings in your web browser. To find out how to
do this for your web browser, please see the RNIB web page on how to change font sizes (opens in a new window).
- Our
website displays text with good contrast levels to differentiate it
from the background in which it is displayed. You can change the
default colours of all websites in your browser to suit your tastes.
See you browser program help for details.
- The site has
been successfully tested on a wide range of adaptive technologies and
browser/platform combinations to ensure access regardless of the
technology used.
- We employ table-less layout and design to simplify screen reader navigation by reducing the structural complexity of Web pages.
- We
have provided printer-friendly functionality in the Cascading Style
Sheets ( CSS) to render pages more compatible with printers and to
prevent printing unnecessary page elements
- The site
includes a 'breadcrumb' directly below the main navigation on each page
(except for the homepage), that lets you know where you are and where
you have been, or where a particular file resides. Breadcrumbs make it
easier to navigate your way back to the root folder.
- The
footer at the bottom of the page, contains navigation links similar to
the header. If the page contains a lot of text, users have no need to
scroll back to the top of the page to find these links.
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Change font size
In most browsers (example: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Netscape) you could change the font size by following the steps below:
- Open your browser
- Click View button from top menu bar
- Click Text Size
- Select your option
If your browser uses a different naming convention and you do not
see this path, please check the Help menu on your browser. The Help
menu is usually the last option on the top menu bar, and it can often
be accessed by pressing the keys "Alt" + "H".
In addition, newer browser versions have a magnifying tool that lets
you zoom into a page and display all elements at 150 percent, 200
percent, etc. Look for the magnifying tool with a "+" character. This
icon is typically located at the bottom of your browser, on the right,
or at the top, below the standard menu tools, on the right.
Furthermore, the keyboard shortcut to access this tool is: "Ctrl" +
"Shift" + "+" to zoom in, and "Ctrl" + "Shift" + "-" to zoom out.
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Keyboard shortcuts
Many web browsers have keyboard shortcuts that can be used with any websites.
Here are some useful ones that work in Internet Explorer and Firefox:
- tab - Jump to the next link or form entry box on the page
- alt + number - Access key (not all sites use access keys)
- alt + < - Go back (equivalent to clicking the 'back' button)
- alt + > - Go forward (equivalent to clicking the 'forward' button)
- F5 - Refresh the page (equivalent to clicking the 'refresh' button)
- spacebar - Select/deselect a checkbox when the keyboard focus is on it
- ctrl + f - Find on this page
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Printing the website
We have provided printer-friendly functionality in the Cascading
Style Sheets ( CSS) to render pages more compatible with printers and
to prevent printing unnecessary page elements. To print a page, use the
'Print page' link at the top of the page.
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Images
We have used images throughout this web site to add interest and
provide variety. These images have been kept as small as possible and
should load quickly. In some cases you are able to click through to a
larger version of an image from a thumbnail example. Each image is
accompanied by an Alternative Text or "ALT" tag. ALT text is the small
amount of text that appears when you place your mouse cursor over an
image and can be read aloud to the user by screen readers and
interpreted by Braille displays.
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Useful downloads
Some of the pages on this web site have been created in Adobe
Acrobat PDF (Portable Format Document) format. To view these documents
you will need to download Acrobat Reader (Opens in new window).
PDF files cannot easily be read by access technology. Adobe have a
web site which provides tools to help make PDF files more accessible to
the visually disabled. These tools convert Adobe PDF documents into
HTML or ASCII text which can then be read by a number of common screen
reading programs that synthesize text as audible speech. The address
for this site is http://access.adobe.com (Opens in a new window).
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