Web accessibility

We're committed to making our website and other digital platforms as accessible as possible.

We aim to make the site and other platforms AA compliant – this is a high standard for web accessibility, set by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) and described in their Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines.

Below are some of the main ways in which we help to make our website more accessible to people.

ReachDeck

This web based tool designed by TextHelp  helps people with Dyslexia, low literacy, English as a Second Language and with mild visual impairments to access the information on our website

Available on every page of our website (the orange circle in the bottom right corner), the ReachDeck software reads web content out loud, and also offers to translate into a wide range of languages.

Meaningful ALT attribute on images

Most images on this site contain additional 'alternative' text that is stored with the image.

This allows users who otherwise wouldn't be able to see the image access to the stored information. This helps users of assistive technology (e.g. screen reading software), as well as visitors who disable images due to a slow internet connection.

Any image that is considered purely decorative will have a blank alternate text (e.g. alt=""). This reduces the amount of unnecessary content on the page.

Header Tags

HTML heading tags are used to convey document structure. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles down to H6. This is important because, among other reasons, it helps people with screen readers to navigate through pages more quickly.

Contextual links

We make sure that links are contextual - the linked words provide contextual information about the page behind the link. This is important because, among other reasons, it helps people with screen readers to reach the content they need more quickly.

Navigating by keywords

We aim to make sure people who navigate the site by keyboard can access all content and perform all online activities on the site.

Plain English

The College has used plain English where possible. However, the site does include medical and other professional terms where appropriate.

Our mental health advice has been awarded the Information Standard, a quality mark for clear, patient focused information.

Use of colour

Care has also been taken to ensure colours are generally of strong contrast for on-screen reading. No information on the site is solely dependent on colour to be intelligible.

Giving users the ability to pause moving content

Users need to be able to control moving content, so that they can read or use it. We've made sure that moving content such as the carousel on the homepage has a pause button so users can control the speed.

Providing transcripts for podcasts

We provide transcripts so people who cannot hear our podcasts can still access the content.