The Royal College of Art aims to make this website as accessible as possible. The site has been built using XHTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and is compliant with W3C-WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, Level AA conformance. As far as possible, we have tried to ensure that:

• all pages on this site comply with Priority 1 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines; most Priority 2 guidelines should be met as well
• all pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Transitional;
• all pages on this site use CSS for layout and should degrade gracefully on non standards-compliant Web browsers
• all style sheets conform to W3C recommendations
• all pages on this site use structured semantic markup: h1 tags are used for main titles, h2 tags for subtitles, and so on.

Access Keys

Access Keys allow you to access the main navigation elements by using your keyboard:

• Windows on a PC: press Alt + Access key, then on some browsers enter/return (Note: Firefox users on Windows platform will need to press Alt + Shift + Access key
• Mac: press Control + Access key, then on some browsers enter/return

The Access keys for the navigation areas are:

• 0: Home
• 1: Navigation level 1
• 2: Navigation level 2
• 3: Navigation level 3
• 4: Navigation level 4
• 5: Navigation level 5
• 6: Accessibility guidelines
• 7: How to Use This Site
• 8: Contact Us
• 9: Skip Navigation
• Search – can be accessed by using the tab button on your keyboard to navigate to the text box. Then enter your search keyword in the text box, tab to the 'Go' button and then press enter/return. This will bring you to the search results page.

Note that Access keys 2 – 5 will only function if a menu selection has been made from the menu above. Menu selections can be made using arrow keys and Return/Enter.

Skip Navigation

To skip the navigation elements at the start of each page and go directly to the main content use the access key assigned to 'Skip Navigation': 9.

Resize Text

As relative font sizes (small, medium, large etc.) and not pixel-based font sizes have been used on this site, you can easily resize the text. To do so, please follow the steps below relevant to your browser:

IE users: select View > Text Size
Firefox users: select View > Text Size
Safari users: select View > Make Text Bigger

Alternatively, some browsers allow you to scroll with the wheel of your mouse whilst holding down the control key, or to change the text size using the keyboard:

PC users hold down Control key and:

• – (for smaller)
• + (for bigger)
• 0 (default size)

Mac users hold down Command key and:

• – (for smaller)
• + (for bigger)
• 0 (default size)

Links

Many links have title attributes that describe the link in greater detail, where the text of the link does not already fully describe the target (such as the headline of an article). As far as possible, links are written to make sense out of context.

Images

All content images used in this site include descriptive Alt tags. Purely decorative graphics will include null Alt tags.

Visual Design

This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers.

If your browser or browsing device does not support style sheets at all, the content of each page should still be readable.

Pages will fit in a minimum of 1024 x 768 resolution screen size.

Increase Text Contrast

IE users: select Tools > Internet Options > Accessibility
Firefox users: select Tools > Options > Content > Fonts and Colours
Safari users: select Preferences > Appearance > click on Select

Changing the Stylesheet

If you would prefer to use your own style sheet, follow the steps below relevant to your browser to override the attached style sheet. Please note that if you choose to do this, the intended presentation will be lost.

IE users: Tools > Internet Options > General > Accessibility > Tick 'Format documents using my style sheet' > Browse (to your style sheet)
Safari users: select Preferences > Advanced > Style Sheet

(Note that when using the site with Javascript switched off, it is recommended that style sheets are disabled.)

Updated 25 May 2012