ACCESSIBILITY
Many Internet users with disabilities find web sites difficult or even impossible to use simply because of the way they are designed. Education Otherwise has recently made many changes to the website to assist users with disabilities to use the site.

Users who have difficulty with mouse control may easily print off many of our documents in pdf format now. You will require Acrobat Reader and this is available to download free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Browser Settings

Not all browsers allow you to make changes to the way you view the page, but here are some tips for some simple changes you may be able to make.

Font type and size

For improved visibility you may be able to increase (or decrease) the size of text and alter the choice of font.

IE Users (PC)

  1. Open your 'Internet Options' window by going to 'View' (or 'Tools' if you have it) and scrolling down.
  2. Choose 'Fonts' and select your preferred style, alphabet and size, then click 'OK'.
  3. Go to 'Accessibility' within 'Internet Options' and click on 'Ignore font styles/font sizes specified on Web pages.'
  4. When you click 'OK', this should ensure that the page you are viewing now appears with your specifications.

Netscape Users (PC)

  1. To increase font size, go to 'View' and then choose 'Increase Font' as many times as you find necessary for the size you want.
  2. To change the type of font, go to 'Preferences', 'Appearance', 'Fonts' and choose 'Use my default fonts, overriding document-specified fonts'. This will ensure that the set fonts are ignored by your browser.

Safari Users

  1. Select "View" from the Safari menu bar at the top of the screen.
  2. Select "Make Text Bigger" to increase the text size.
  3. Or, select "Make Text Smaller" to decrease the text size.

IE Users (Mac)

The View Menu has a Text Zoom option offering a range of percentage sizes as well as Make Text Bigger/Smaller options (Cmd & ±) or you can select Customize Toolbar and add the Bigger/Smaller buttons.

Netscape Users (Mac)

Also offers the Text Zoom and Smaller/Larger (Cmd & -/+) options from the View menu.

Colour of text and background

You may require specific colours in order to be able to view the site easily.

IE Users (PC)

  1. Go to 'Internet Options' (as above) and choose 'Colors'.
  2. You can change text and background page colour as well as the colour in which links appear, then click 'OK'.
  3. Choose 'Accessibility' from within 'Internet Options' and click on 'Ignore colors specified on Web pages'.
  4. When you click 'OK', this should ensure that the page you are viewing now appears with your specifications.

Netscape Users

  1. Go to 'Preferences', 'Appearance', 'Colors' and choose 'Always use
    my colors, overriding document', then specify your colours.

Safari Users

To change the colours, font style etc then you will need to provide your own stylesheet which can be assigned in the Safari preferences:

  1. Select "Preferences" from the Safari menu bar at the top of the screen.
  2. Click on the "Advanced" button on the preferences pane.
  3. Click on the "Stylesheet" drop down menu.
  4. Select "Other.." from the drop down menu.
  5. Using the "File Open" dialogue box, navigate to your personal stylesheet.
  6. Select your stylesheet and click on the "Choose" button.
  7. Safari will now use your own personal settings for how a web page should look.

You can also specify a minimum font size for a web page. This means that those web pages which have a font size smaller than you specified will automatically have the the size increased to your minimum. Applies to all web pages.

  1. Select "Preferences" from the Safari menu bar at the top of the screen.
  2. Click on the "Advanced" button on the preferences pane.
  3. Tick the "Universal Access" check box and select a minimum font size from the drop down menu to the right.

Contact Us

Our telephone helpline (0870 7300074) is a 24 hour helpline which will give you a telephone number to call in your region of the country.

Alternatively, you may wish to email us with your query, especially if you find using the telephone difficult. Please address any queries to enquiries@education-otherwise.org

We hope that this page and the alterations made to the site make viewing easier for all our users. If you have difficulty with the site, please email to webmaster@education-otherwise.org