apsi is aware that many users of this site may have accessibility problems and many browsers have features that facilitate better accessibility for users. The most recent browsers have more facilitities. In designing this site we have tried to make it accessible to people with disabilities. These notes are taken mainly from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 at http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT.

Accessibility defined:
For those unfamiliar with accessibility issues pertaining to Web page design, consider that many users may be operating in contexts very different from your own.
Users with disability:

1. May not be able to see, hear, move, or may not be able to process some types of information easily or at all.
2. May have difficulty reading or comprehending text.
3. May not have or be able to use a keyboard or mouse.
4. May have a text-only screen, a small screen or a slow Internet connection.
5. May not speak or understand fluently the language in which the document is written.
6. May be in a situation where their eyes, ears or hands are busy or interfered with (e.g., driving to work, working in a loud environment etc.).
7. May have an early version of a browser, a different browser entirely, a voice browser or a different operating system.

apsi aims to make this website user-friendly, especially for people with a disability and this will be a continuing task so we would like your feedback.

Basic principles:
Use of colours where there is 75% contrast. Keep the design simple so that no background images interfere with foreground text. Use darker text on lighter background.
Trade-offs have to be made where speech synthesisers use the menu (or navigation bar) which is repeated on each page. This makes it easier for people with intellectual difficulties to move through the site and also requires only one mouse click (or enter key) to open another page or return to the home page.

Window size:
The basic window size has been kept to 640 pixels enabling sight impaired people to fully utilise all the screen where they use large monitors without having to use horizontal scroll bars. However, no matter what the window width the text will transform to fill the window horizontally. This 640 width also allows a window to be printed on normal A4 paper no matter what the window size has been expanded to.

Images:
For all graphics a text equivalent has been used so that for text-only browsers, browsers where images have been turned off and screen readers the content describes the graphic.