Website accessibility

Our aim is to make this British Red Cross website accessible to all, including those users with visual, cognitive, hearing or mobility impairments. The site is being made compatible with adaptive technologies currently used to help people with disabilities to use computers. This includes screen-reading/magnifying software, voice-activated input software, and switch access.

If you use adaptive technology and are having problems accessing information on the site, please let us know which material you wanted to access and what the difficulty you experienced was by emailing redcrosstraining@redcross.org.uk.

Text resizing

You can resize the text in your browser by following these instructions:

PC - Internet Explorer 6: From the top menu bar, select View and point to Text size
PC - Internet Explorer 7: From the menu bar underneath the search field, select Page and point to Text size
PC - Other browsers
Increase text size: Hold down the CTRL key and press +
Decrease text size: Hold down the CTRL key and press –
Mac - all browsers
Increase text size: Hold down the Command key and press +
Decrease text size: Hold down the Command key and press –

Improvements we are making

Some of the specific steps we are taking to improve accessibility include:

To provide subtitles and transcripts to all video content (see below).
To include appropriate headings on larger pages to aid navigation by screen readers.
To provide a sitemap to aid those who have trouble using the main navigation system.
To make the language of the text plain and easy to understand so that the pages have good readability.
To make the text of links adequately meaningful so that their target is clear when they are read out of context.
To give images appropriate alternative text so that the information they contain is conveyed to those who cannot see them.
To ensure that foreground and background colours contrast sufficiently so that information is conveyed to those who have difficulty distinguishing colours.

Videos

We are in the process of adding captions to all our videos to assist deaf or hard of hearing users. Captions can be activated by hovering the mouse over the arrow at the bottom right of a video and selecting the 'CC' icon. We are also providing transcripts on this site where possible.

Guidelines

Our aim is that the British Red Cross site will comply with the Web Accessibility Initiative Guidelines 2.0. The guidelines are divided into three levels of compliance: Single-A (what you must do), Double-A (what you should do), and Triple-A (what you may do). Specifically, we are working on ensuring that the site complies with Double-A standard. This means we will meet all priority one and two checkpoints of the guidelines.