Accessibility - how to use this website and make use of its accessibility features

Using this site you can find out more about Rivers and there are links to downloadable resources and additional links to other relevant sites.

On this page you can read about:

• Accessibility
• Navigation bar and links
• You are here breadcrumb trail
• Site map
• Finding related information
• PDF's

Accessibility

The Rivers Project website is designed to be accessible to as many people as possible, including those with disabilities of one form or another, which could be sensory or motor disabilities. We have followed World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) WAI recommendations. A website can be rated at one of three Web content Accessibility Guidelines conformance levels - A (Priority 1), AA (Priority 1 and 2) and AAA (Priority 1, 2 and 3). For this Rivers Project website we have aimed to adhere to AA.

• Access Keys - these are intented to provide keyboard shortcuts as an alternative form of navigation around the website. With Windows-based systems press the 'Alt key', the access key and the 'Return' key. With the Macintosh system press the 'Ctrl key', the access key and the 'Return' key.

• S - Skip Navigation
• 1 - Home Page
• 2 - Site Map
• 3 - Contact Us
• 4 - Accessibility
• a - River Processes
• b - River Valley Development
• c - River Fieldwork
• d - Overflowing Rivers
• e - Rivers Need Care
• f - River Facts
  
  
• Skip Navigation - A skip navigation facility has been provided on this site for the benefit of users with screen readers. It can be implemented by using the skip navigation access key i.e. ALT + S + Return. Implementing skip navigation on any given page allows the user to bypass the navigation areas and go directly to that page's main content.
  
• Modify Font sizes - The RNIB website provides useful information on 'How to make the text larger in your web browser, without using any special software'.
  
• Text-only vs Flash content - Some sections of this website contain 'Flash' elements, which require the Flash Player Plug-in. However, there is always a text-only alternative to any Flash content to enable those who don't have the plug-in or don't have a sufficiently good internet connection to access equivalent content.
  
• Multimedia content - Where video/audio content is presented on the website, text transcriptions are provided.

Navigation bar and links

Every page on the website has a 'navigation bar' along the top of the page, underneath the Rivers Project banner. Clicking on any 'link' in this navigation bar will take you to a page which will show wha else is included in that section. You can then go to another page by using the links that appear in the navigation bar or the links within the text itself.

In addition to the navigation bar there are links to all the main sections at the bottom of every page.

You are here - breadcrumb trail

As with most websites the pages on the Rivers Project website are organised 'hierarchically': it's easiest to think of them as branching out like an upside-down tree sheape (much like a family tree), with the Home page linked to several Section introduction pages, and each of these linked to other pages. At any time you can see where you are in this pattern by looking at the breadcrumb trail at the top of the main content section. There you will see a line of text starting Home followed by a series of page names, which show in order how you would move from the home page to your current page. You can click on any of the previous page names in this string to move to that page.

Site map

On every page there is a link to our Sitemap. This is a list of all the main pages on the site, organised under the relevant section names. It's simply another way of showing a hierarchically organised website: if a page name is indented compared to the one above it then it is considered to be at a level below that page - it is a 'child' of that page. You can click on any page name shown on the sitemap to go to that page.

Finding related information

On many pages of the website some words or phrases will be underlined: usually these link to other pages on the Rivers Project website that contain more about that subject, although sometimes we link to external websites where we consider their information to be useful.

PDF's

Some of the information on this website is provided as PDF files. You will need Acrobat Reader, but the good news is that this software is free. To find out more about reading PDF's and using Adobe Acrobat Reader, check out the Adobe website.