Accessibility

Help with using this website

• Policy and standards
• How you can change the appearance of pages on this website.
• A usability statement which details the levels of standards compliance achieved to date and our plans for improving the usability of this website.
• Information about copyright and using materials you find on this website created by us or funded by us.
• Privacy.
• The technical infrastructure used to build and manage this website.

We are always pleased to receive any comments on this website, either by emailing webteam@medev.ac.uk or by calling 0191 222 5888. Thanks to the Plain English Campaign for allowing us to use their website. We have based our information in this section on their site.

Policy and standards

MEDEV is committed to making it's website user friendly and accessible to all. We have consulted with our various communities and undertaken usability studies in order to meet the requirements of our different user groups. We take steps to ensure our website conforms to web best practice guidelines and standards, such as the guidelines provided by web accessibility initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

Style and how to change the appearance of pages on this website

The site uses style sheets to control font colours and sizes. You can override the standard settings through your web browser preferences. The settings vary from browser to browser.

You can change the way your internet browser displays these pages (and any others) by changing the way your browser behaves. If you prefer to use keyboard shortcuts rather than a mouse, you can find a full list of the ones for Internet Explorer on PCs at http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/ie6/default.aspx.

Internet Explorer and Firefox

There are two main browsers (programs) that people use to surf the internet on a PC (Personal Computer). These are Internet Explorer and Firefox. If you look at the very top of your screen, next to the words About this site you should be able to see which browser you are using.

The two browsers can sometimes show the same page in different ways. We check the site with a number of browsers including Internet Explorer, Mozilla based browsers (such as Firefox), Safari and Opera. If you experience any problems with the site, please let us know by emailing enquiries@medev.ac.uk.

Refresh and reload

Occasionally we get e-mails from people who cannot find any changes on a page we have updated. This is usually because of something called a disk cache. This is where your computer makes a copy of pages you visit often so that next time you visit you do not have to reload them. Sometimes this may mean your computer does not check our site to see if the page you are visiting has been changed.

If you think this is happening, you can get round it by pressing the Refresh (Internet Explorer) or Reload (Firefox) button at the top of your screen. This will always give you the latest version of the page you are visiting.

Changing the text size

When we designed this site, we tried to use as large a text size as possible. However, we also had to make sure we could get as much information as we could on the screen to make it easier for you to find your way round the site. If you would find it helpful to have larger text, you can change this yourself by doing the following:

• With Internet Explorer, click on View at the top of the screen and then select Text Size. You will then be able to choose Larger or Largest.
• With Firefox, click on View at the top of the screen and then select Zoom.

You can also change font sizes.

Changing the font

We have designed this site with a sans-serif as the main font. Some people prefer a different style of font, such as Times New Roman (which is similar to that used in newspapers). You can change the font displayed on web pages yourself, but it is a bit fiddly to do:

In Internet Explorer

• Click on Tools at the top of your screen and select Internet Options.
• Click on the Accessibility button, and then click in the box next to Ignore font styles specified on web pages, then click on OK.
• Click on Fonts, and then choose a font from the left-hand list (web page font).
• Click the OK button on both boxes.

In Firefox

• Click on Firefox at the top of your screen, and then select Preferences.
• Click on Content in the tabs at the top.
• Look for the box next to Default font.
• Choose a font and size from the drop-down menus.
• Click on OK.

Usability statement

This website was designed with our users in mind – they are students and teachers on undergraduate or pre-registration healthcare related programmes in the United Kingdom.

Standards compliance

1. All pages on this site comply with priority 1 and 2 guidelines of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. We have reviewed all the guidelines and believe to the best of our knowledge that these pages are in compliance to AA standard.
2. We will continue to work towards further compliance with WCAG nad other accessibility guidelines.
3. All pages on this site validate as XHTML 1.0 Strict. We use programs which can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid HTML to check this.
4. This website has been validated for CSS2 (cascading stylesheets). We use programs which can determine with 100% accuracy whether a page is valid CSS to check this.
5. Because we aim to comply with the XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS2 web standards, pages will currently only display fully under Internet Explorer 5.2 or above, Opera, Safari, later Mozilla builds, and Netscape 6 and above. You should be able to see content in any browser.
6. We randomly test a number of pages on this site to check our standards compliance statements on a monthly basis.

User acceptance testing

Each new version of the site is tested with groups of users, whose comments on all aspects of usability are taken note of before the website is made live. We try to include users at all stages of design and testing of major site updates.

Navigation aids

Website users can access all parts of the website whether they are using a screen reader or a text browser. We have included a number of other navigation aids such as a site map and A-Z facility to help you access the information you are looking for.

1. All pages have a link to the home page to aid navigation in text-only browsers.
2. All pages include a search button.
3. We will continue to add further navigation aids to this website in line with our usability improvements.

Links

1. We try to make sure that links have title attributes that describe every link in greater detail.
2. We try to make sure that links are written to make sense out of context.
3. We run a program to check for broken links on a weekly basis and try to make sure that broken links are fixed quickly.

Images

All images used in this site include descriptive ALT attributes, written to make sense out of context.

Visual design

1. This website uses cascading style sheets (CSS) for visual layout.
2. This website uses only relative font sizes – this makes it quite easy to change the size of text on your screen. Instructions on how to change the size of the text on your screen appear on this page (see above).
3. Content on the site should be accessible to non-Javascript enabled browsers.
4. Pre version 4 browsers (of both Internet Explorer and Netscape) have little or no support for cascading style sheets (CSS). The site will lose much of its styling and formatting in these browsers and others which do not use cascading stylesheets, though content should be accessible.
5. If you are using a browser which does not support CSS, navigation will appear as unstyled bulletted lists.
6. Pages on this website will print in any browser that supports CSS. They will also print in any browser that doesn't.
7. Wherever downloadable content is available on this website we try, wherever possible, to offer PDF, RTF and HTML versions.

Copyright on this site

The copyright in all of the material on this website belongs to the Higher Education Academy Subject Centre for Medicine, Dentistry & Veterinary Medicine.

You are welcome to download any of the material for your own use on these terms:

• You accept all risks from downloading, installing or using the material.
• The subject centre will not be responsible for damage (including damage caused by viruses) to your computer or software or any losses suffered by you as a result of downloading, installing or using the material.

We agree in principle with the work being done by Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org) on open licencing, and will use UK versions of these licences wherever possible, usually cc-by-nc-sa. Where you can't see this licence, and if you would like to reproduce, redistribute or modify any of the material on this website please contact the webteam@medev.ac.uk to obtain our permission (its rare we say no!).

Privacy

We do not keep a database of people who send e-mails to us, and we do not pass these details to other people.

We do run a mailing list which you can register for by emailing us – enquiries@medev.ac.uk . We only use this to send out occasional announcements and a monthly newsletter, and we do not pass on any of the e-mail addresses. In addition we can, if you ask us to, add you to another list so that you can get printed copies of our newsletter and special reports. You can ask for this by email or by phoning 0191 222 5888.

Cookies

A cookie is a piece of data stored on the user's computer while they are visiting a particular website. It contains simple information about the user's identity but no personal information. This website does use cookies.

Technical infrastructure

The site is built using the Django web publishing environment, with MySQL databases.