Using this site - our site is accessible to everyone

"Hearing Concern is absolutely delighted with our new site. Information is now far easier to locate and the design is more energetic and appealing than ever before. Importantly for us, Usability by Design was able to ensure that the site is accessible to people with a range of abilities, complying with standards set out by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative."

Caz Cronin, Deputy Chief Executive & Communications Manager, Hearing Concern
(view www.hearingconcern.org.uk in a new window)

We would like all visitors to our site to find the information they are looking for, quickly and easily. That's why we've endeavoured to make this site usable, and accessible. If you find an accessibility issue in using our site, please tell us.

We have used a number of accessibility features on our site to try and make our site easier to use for everyone. If you'd like to know how to improve the accessibility of your own site, then find out about our web accessibility services.

Please select one of the following three options to learn more about using our site:

• Usability features of this site.
• Accessibility features of this site.
• Accessibility & usability standards.

 

Usability features of this site

When using this site, you will find a number of features that should ensure you quickly locate the information you are looking for:

• Finding your place in the site
  The navigator to the left shows you each area you can visit, and the pages within that area. The current area and page will be marked by colour and by the lack of underlines. The section and page information will also be repeated at the top of the page you are viewing.
• Returning to the home page
  When you want to return to the home page, you can either click on the 'Home' option in the navigator to the left, or you can click on our logo (at the top left of every page). You will be returned straight away to our home page.
• Finding extra hints
  Each option in the navigator to the left also has a hint, to explain a little more about the content found in that section or page. To see the hint, move your mouse over the option and wait for a couple of seconds. The hint will appear.
• Increasing the size of the text
  We've tried to make the text size on our site easy to read, but if you find that you'd prefer the font size to be larger or smaller, then you can easily control this using your browser settings (something that doesn't work on many sites). Please note that if you change the text size you view our site at, this will affect all other sites you see until you change your browser setting back again. To increase or decrease the text size, follow these basic instructions for Internet Explorer:
  • Click on the 'View' menu in your browser.
  • Click on the 'Text size' option.
  • Select the size you would like to see.
• Skipping navigation
  The first link that you can reach on all of our pages is a 'content' link, that will take you straight into the page content. This can also be accessed using a keyboard shortcut of Alt + S (on Internet Explorer you also need to press the Enter key). If you are using a text-based or audio browser, this will help in reducing the time taken to read through our pages.

Want to suggest further usability enhancements, or discuss adding these features to your own site? Click here to contact us.

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Accessibility features of this site

When using this site, you will find a number of features that should ensure the site is fully accessible:

• Increasing the size of the text
  We've tried to make the text size on our site easy to read, but if you find that you'd prefer the font siz to be larger or smaller, then you can easily control this using your browser settings (something that doesn't work on many sites). Please note that if you change the text size you view our site at, this will affect all other sites you see until you change your browser setting back again. To increase or decrease the text size, follow these basic instructions for Internet Explorer:
  • Click on the 'View' menu in your browser.
  • Click on the 'Text size' option.
  • Select the size you would like to see.
• Skipping navigation
  The first link that you can reach on all of our pages is a 'content' link, that will take you straight into the page content. This can also be accessed using a keyboard shortcut of Alt + S (on Internet Explorer you also need to press the Enter key). If you are using a text-based or audio browser, this will help in reducing the time taken to read through our pages.

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Accessibility & usability standards

Making a site accessible to everyone who wants to use it is important, and we have tried to ensure that our site is completely accessible to all. All pages in this site conform to the following standards:

	The page you clicked on conforms to our usability standards, and has been approved as 'usable'. Well, it would have to, wouldn't it..!
	The page you clicked on conforms to the World-wide Web (W3C) HTML 4.0 Transitional standard.
	The page you clicked on conforms to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines, to AAA standard.
	The page you clicked on has also been approved by the 'Bobby' service from Cast.org.
	To ensure that the site works well for all site visitors we have also ensured that the page you clicked on conforms to the WAI Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 standard.

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Want to know more about our accessibility services? Click here to contact us.