Tips & helpful hints
On this page:
Navigating the website
Every page on the website will have the same look and feel to help you get around. The detailed description of the layout will assist you in familiarising yourself to the navigation structure.
Viewing the site
There are some quick tips you can follow to enlarge the font or increase the colour contrast. These appear on the front page and in other areas of the site.
At the top of each page, use the links to "change text size" and "change contrast" for advise on customising this website and for more details on how to make changes to your computer.
Using Assistive Technology
Care and testing ensure that the website is as accessible as possible to the largest number of adaptive technology users. Primarily care has been taken to ensure:
- validation to HTML standards to allow screen readers to understand the page
- following the Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines, including suitable descriptive texts for images, illustrative hyperlinks and informative titles on every page.
- adherence to best practice in web standards for structuring code for maximum accessibility.
Please let us know if there are any areas where further improvements can be made.
File Formats
All the information on this website is provided or described in a format like this page so you can read it with your browser. This is called Hypertext Mark-up Language, or HTML. You can print most pages.
Occasionally we may also provide information in other formats so that you can print them out in a specific layout, braille them or listen to them. Each link to an alternative format has the name of the format and the size of the download in brackets.
The common formats are:
- mp3 - this is an audio file. Mp3 files are commonly played in Windows Media Player or iTunes, however this will depend on how your computer has been set up.
- Word / RTF - these are document files that will open in Microsoft Word or a similar text editor.
- BRF - this is a braille format file that will open in Duxbury and some other braille transcription software.
- PPT / PPS - there are Powerpoint files containing presentations.
We have no control over the application you use to access these alternative formats as this is set on your own computer. If you have difficulty, contact the adaptive technology helpdesk.
Printing
Print layouts
When printing pages, printing has been designed to reflect the look and feel of the website.
Some pages have "print layout" options for both regular print and large print. Look near the bottom of the content links to the print versions.
Print headers/footers
When printing pages, headers and footers are automatically added to each page. This lists the source of the information as well as the page number.
To suppress headers and footers, select "File" in the menu followed by "Page Setup" (or "Print Setup" in Opera). Delete the contents of the Header and Footer boxes. Type them in again to restore.
Missing text after printing?
Sometimes the text may be missing on the left and/or right of the page after printing. The content of the page has been adjusted where possible, but some computers will still omit text.
You can commonly fix this by adjusting the print margins on the browser. To adjust print margins, select "File" in the menu followed by "Page Setup" (or "Print Setup" in Opera). Increase the value of the left and right margins.