Accessibility Help
The Southampton Solent University staff and student Portal aims to conform to the following web accessibility guidelines in order to ensure that the website is accessible to users with a range of disabilities, including those with visual impairments:
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W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines priority 1 and 2 guidelines
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XHTML 1.0
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CSS 2.0
Steps taken to improve accessibility
Access keys
Changeable text size
Javascript
Links
Multimedia
PDF Documents
Printable pages
Skip links
Stylesheet switching
Tables and forms
Text only
More help
Access keys
Access keys are essentially keyboard shortcuts on a website that give a keyboard or screen-reader user quick and easy access to all the main areas of the site.
access key S – Skip to content
access key 0 – Accessibility help
access key 1 – Home page
access key 2 – Contact page
access key 3 – Site map
access key 4 – Search (places cursor in the search form box at the top of the page)
access key 5 – Help page
access key A – Support
access key B – Library
access key C – Campus
access key D – Careers
access key F – Strategy
How do I use Access Keys
In most web browsers, hold down the “
Alt ” key (on PC) or “
Ctrl ” (on Mac), press the number of the Access key, release both keys then press “
Enter ”
Internet Explorer: Alt
Firefox 2 & 3: Alt + Shift
Opera: Shift + Esc
Changeable text size
The portal uses an easy to read non-serif font type, size and colour in default size 12. You can also make the text on the website larger or smaller using your browser's controls. See change text size page for further instructions.
Javascript
Javascript can be turned off and the site is still fully functional; all Javascript is used in the spirit of progressive enhancements.
Links
All links use descriptive links (e.g. Find out more about Accessibility instead of Click here)
Multimedia
We have used Flash videos on the portal to create a rich multimedia experience for our users. We aim to make our video and audio content accessible to everyone by providing transcripts or captions wherever possible. All images have alternative descriptive text.
PDF Documents
Some documents in this site are stored in Portable Document Format (PDF). This file format is used to store document with complex formatting that the authors would like to preserve (typically text in several columns and mixed with a number of graphics).
To view and print PDF files, you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader (or an equivalent PDF viewer) installed: click the following link below to download the software: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
Adobe provide a free online tool which converts PDF files to text. The service will return the document to you as a web page (HTML) or as plain text: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html
Printable pages
Use your browser's Print function to automatically print pages without any navigation elements.
Skip Links
To support blind users and keyboard users pages have a 'skip to content' at the top of the page which allows blind users to skip over the navigation links to the main content of the page.
Stylesheet Switching
The portal design uses an easy-to-see contrasting web colour scheme but because Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) are used to define styles it is also possible to use your own custom stylesheets. If your browser does not support CSS or if you turn CSS off in your browser, the content should still be readable. See Change Background Colours page for information about changing the colours that your browser uses.
Tables and Forms
All WAI guidelines have been followed to ensure tables and forms are accessible .
Text only view
We provide a text only non-image based version of the portal, whic is available from the text only link at the top of the page.
Try out the text only link
More Help
If you are unable to read or comprehend any of the pages or documents on this site, please use our feedback form to contact us.
For more help on making websites more accessible to you, by changing your browser, computer, keyboard and mouse settings please go to the BBC website My Web My Way.