Accessibility
The Whole Systems Partnership is committed to making its web site as accessible as possible to users with disabilities, including users who may be blind or partially sighted.
We are continually working to improve the accessibility and usability of our content but if you are experiencing any difficulties downloading files or accessing a particular page, please contact us for assistance.
Access keys
The UK Government Access Keys Standard has been applied to this site. This means that if you have difficulty in using a mouse or similar devices, you can use keyboard shortcuts to reach key pages. Information on how to use each of the keyboard shortcuts available is below.
- s - Skip navigation
- 1 - Home page
- 2 - [Not in use]
- 3 - Site map
- 4 - [Not in use]
- 5 - [Not in use]
- 6 - [Not in use]
- 7 - [Not in use]
- 8 - [Not in use]
- 9 - Feedback form
- 0 - Access key details
- p - Privacy policy
- q - Contact details
- x - Company profile
- z - WSP Learning Centre
How to use access keys
- Internet Explorer 5+ for Windows: hold down ALT and select the access key, then press ENTER.
- Internet Explorer 4 for Windows: hold down ALT and the access key.
- Internet Explorer 5+ for Mac: hold down CTRL and select the access key.
- Mozilla: hold down ALT and select the access key.
- Firefox: hold down ALT and select the access key.
- Netscape 6+: hold down the ALT key and select the number/letter of the access key.
Web design standards
Our web site has been designed to meet all the guidelines in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative's ‘A’ standard. This is the basic requirement to ensure that most groups are able to access web documents. However our web site also meets many of the priorities in Levels ‘AA’ and ‘AAA’ which are the highest standards in accessible web design.
Alternative text
All images on this site are accompanied by alternative text which, where appropriate, identifies an image or its function. This alternative text (alt-text) is generally only visible when the browser's automatic image loading feature is turned off. Images are used primarily for aesthetic reasons and no crucial content is lost if images are disabled.
Links
All text links are written so that they make sense when read out of context. They also include ‘title’ attributes explaining where the link takes you - these appear when a mouse hovers over the link.
All links to external web sites open in a new window. As this may pose problems for some assistive technology, the ‘title’ text also specifies that clicking the link will cause a new window to open.
Because the navigation box of links appears higher up in the page's code than the main content, a ‘skip links’ facility as been built in, to take you straight to the main content of the page using access key ‘s’
Changing the size of the text on the screen
To enable you to re-size text to suit your requirements, font sizes have been specified as a percentage of the default font size on your computer.
Most web browsers have the facility to:
- Specify the default font size (this can usually be found under Preferences or Internet Options)
- Either increase just the font size, or all the elements on a page (including images), for an individual page. For example in Internet Explorer 7.0 for Windows, there ia a zoom button in the bottom right corner; in the earlier Internet Explorer 6.0 go to the View menu and then Text size.
The factory setting for default font size is often set at 16px. Because this is a little large for most people's tastes, the site has been designed around a font 75% of the default size, which can be increased using your browser's ‘increase text size’ or ‘zoom’ facility.