Accessibility

We recognise the importance of making our website accessible for all our users. The following details how we have approached accessibility on www.scottishmortgage.com.

Navigation

All areas of our website are available through accessible links. Any user who has javascript disabled will be able to access all areas of the site regardless. Our navigation is accessible through screen readers to make it available to all users.

Headings and navigation menus

HTML heading tags are used to convey document structure. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles etc.

Navigation menus are marked up as HTML lists. This ensures that the number of links in the list is read out at the start and it can be skipped easily.

Images

All images used in this site include descriptive alt tag attributes. Where an image has no use other than being decorative the alt tag is set to null to allow easy reading of the site by all users.

Colours

We have taken care to ensure that the site's font and background colour combinations contrast significantly and are effective in ensuring information is still clear when viewed in different colour combinations.

If you wish to override the site's colours, you can do this by changing your browser settings to your own preference.

Font size

Most of the font sizes we use on our site are sizable. You can change the font size to make it either larger or smaller via your browser settings.

You can change the font size in the following ways depending on your browser;

• In Internet Explorer; select View, then Text Size, and then your preferred size.
• In FireFox; select View, then Zoom, and then Zoom in or Zoom out to alter the text size.
• In Safari; click on display icon (top right) and select Zoom, Click Zoom in or Zoom out to change font size.
  
  

Stylesheets

This site uses cascading style sheets for all visual layout. If your browser or browsing device does not support stylesheets at all, the use of structured semantic mark up ensures that the content of each page is still readable and clearly structured.

You can apply your own stylesheet onto this website by;

• Internet Explorer; select Tools, then Internet Options, then Accessibility, next click on any or all 3 checkboxes to ignore colours, font styles or font sizes, in the same window you can change your style sheet by clicking the checkbox that says, 'format document using my style sheet' then browse to your style sheet and click OK.
• In Firefox; select Main Menu, then View and then Page Style and No Style. Select Basic Page Style to restore the page styling.
• In Safari; click on the Develop in the main menu and Disable Styles.
  Note: If the Develop Menu item isn’t available on the main menu, then Select preferences in the Display a Menu of General Safari Settings and click on Preferences. Select the Advanced Tab and click on Show Develop menu in bar
  
  

Tables

Most data tables have properly scoped header cells, to allow screen readers to render them intelligently. We have also ensured table summaries are used as well as captions where appropriate. Tables used for layout use none of the above attributes to ensure that they are not confused with data tables.

Forms and fields

All forms fields follow a logical tab sequence to ensure easy navigation.

Most form fields also have ‘label’ and ‘id’ attributes to explicitly associate the form field with its label to allow for easy entry of data.

JavaScript

This site uses JavaScript to render some areas of the site, including tools and navigation items. Where it is used all pages and process are still accessible should Javascript be turned off.

Links

All links have been written to make sense when taken out of context. Where appropriate, we have also added link title attributes to describe the link in greater detail.

Copy

Abbreviation and acronym tags have been used where appropriate to ensure abbreviations and acronyms are given a full textual explanation.

We have also ensured that blockquotes are only ever used for identifying quotations. They are not used for formatting purposes.

Useful links:

If you would like to know more about accessibility and the Internet, you may be interested in the following websites:

www.rnib.org.uk – The Royal National Institute for the Blind.
www.w3.org/WAI – W3C web accessibility guidelines.
www.bcab.org.uk – British Computer Association of the Blind.
www.bbc.co.uk/accessibility – BBC. Provides accessibility guides to enable computer users to make the most of the internet.
www.legislation.gov.uk – The Equality Act 2010.
JAWS – a screen reader for use with Windows.
Lynx – a free text-only web browser for blind users with refreshable Braille displays.
Links – a free text-only web browser for visual users with low bandwidth.