Accessibility

Text Sizes

All the text on the site is controlled by style sheet and is scaleable by altering your browser settings.  To change the size of the text displayed in your browser.
 
In Internet Explorer 6:
Go to View menu
Select Text Size
Select the size of text you would like (smallest, small, larger or largest)
More guidance on IE6 can be found at: http://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/ie6/default.aspx
 
In Firefox:
Go to ‘View Menu’
Select ‘Text Size'
And then select Increase or Decrease
In Safari:
choose 'Preferences'
click on 'Appearance’
go to 'Standard Font’ and click ‘Select’
select the font size from the ‘sizes’ menu

Navigation aids

The home page and all subsequent pages include search functionality to search the sites content.
 
The pages in the site follow a natural tab order.  Where this is not the case, the tab order has been set in the code to force a user down the correct logical order of the page.

Links

There are no "JavaScript:" pseudo-links.  All links can be followed in any browser, even if scripting is turned off. There are no links that open new windows without warning.

Images

All content images used on the site have descriptive ALT attributes.
 
The site makes extensive use of Cascading Style Sheets and most images are in the ‘background’ of the page and not registered by screen readers.  This is worth noting when using the ‘disable image’ feature of some browsers.

Standards compliance

Student Finance England is committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability.  We are actively working to increase the accessibility and usability of our website and, in doing so, adhere to available standards and guidelines.
 
This website endeavours to conform to level’ AA’ of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.
 
Whilst we strive to adhere to the accepted guidelines and standards for accessibility and usability, it is not always possible to do so in all areas of the website. The secure areas of the site cannot be accessed through the Opera Browser and other browsers that share its User Agent (such as the text browser Lynx).