The following features improve navigation for screen reader users, keyboard navigation and users of text-only browsers.
Navigation shortcuts
There is a short menu at the start of every page that allows you to jump directly to the most important parts of the page, including main content and navigation. Sighted people who use the keyboard to navigate will see these links appear on screen when using the Tab key to navigate through the page. Each shortcut has an access key assigned.
Access keys
Access keys are keyboard shortcuts that replace the need to use the mouse for navigation, in browsers that support them. In Internet Explorer on Windows, you can press ALT + an access key; on Macintosh, you can press Control + an access key. Then press Enter to activate the link. The following access keys are available throughout the website:
1 Jump to Homepage
2 Jump to About
3 Jump to Work
4 Jump to Products
5 Jump to Services
6 Jump to Contact
7 Jump to Login
M Jump to Site Map
A Jump to Accessibility
L Jump to Legal
These access keys have been chosen to follow the UK government website guidelines where applicable, in order to support the adoption of a useful standard. Wherever possible, they also avoid conflicting with commonly-used screen reader keyboard shortcuts.
Structured, semantic markup: Headings and navigation menus
- HTML heading tags are used to convey document structure. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles, and so on. For example, on this page, JAWS users can skip to the next section within the accessibility statement by pressing ALT+INSERT+2.
- 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 content images used in this site include descriptive alt attributes. Purely decorative graphics include empty alt attributes. Images used for headings are applied using style sheets — since the heading exists as text behind the graphic, alt attributes are unnecessary.
