Access Manager - Accessibility

General information:

This website is built to conform to Australian Government standards for accessibility. These features include:

  • The provision of content and user interface features to assist users with varying forms and degrees of disability in accessing the content and services offered via this website using assistive technologies.
  • Keyboard navigation including shortcut keys and tab indexing, to enable quick access to various elements in the site interface.
  • Relatively sized text, enabling users to change the size of the website text, either via the widgets in the user interface, or via their web browser's preferences (if applicable).
  • Site skins with high and low contrast versions of the site, and a text only version, enabling a range of browsing devices to access the site content.

Support for assistive devices

Additional features have been included within various elements of the site:

Data tables
Summary information is provided for screen reader software, which describes the alignment of tables (horizontal, vertical or both), identifies which cells may or may not be included, based on certain parameters, as well as identifying cells containing interactive elements such as hyperlinks contained within the table data.
Captions to summarise the table contents are provided with all data tables.
Title attributes
Title attributes are assigned to all hyperlinks within the page content.
Title attributes have been assigned to all text inputs and text areas to describe the maximum permitted characters.
Title attributes have also been assigned to all radio buttons and checkboxes to provide information on the impact of selecting a given option.
Form labels
Label elements are explicitly associated with the form input to which they belong, and where applicable, also have title attributes to provide further information.

Keyboard navigation

Keyboard navigation is a way of enabling users to quickly navigate to the important elements of a site or page without the use of a pointing device, such as a mouse.

Such users may include the vision impaired, users accessing the site with wireless devices such as mobile phones and palm pilots, as well as "power users".

Tab indexes

Tab indexes are assigned to a number of the key elements on a page (such as the fields in a form), which enables a user to move between these form fields quickly, by pressing the "Tab" key to reach the page element they wish to interact with.

Holding down the "Shift" key whilst pressing "Tab", navigates backwards through the tab order of the page elements.

Access keys

Access keys are a keyboard shortcut to either sections of the site, or sections within a page. To activate an access key, hold down the "Alt" key (Windows) or "Command/Apple" key (Mac), and key the number which corresponds with the area you wish to access.

The access keys common to all pages of this site are:

  • 0 - A reference list of accessibility keys (this page).
  • 1 - Home page
  • 2 - Site Map
  • 3 - Help
  • 4 - Contact
  • 5 - Side menu
  • 6 - Tips (for forms, where applicable)
  • 7 - Footer
  • 8 - Bypass the navigation and go to the main content of your current page.

Please note: In some browsers, you may also need to press the "Enter/Return” key to activate the link, if it is within the current page.

For example:

  • "Alt" + "0" will refresh this page.
  • "Alt" + "8" (then ENTER) will skip down to the content of the page.

Additional information

The Opera browser is not supported by AM and we cannot guarantee that it will work correctly for users of this browser. Additional information for users of Firefox can be found on the Mozilla website.

Text size

The site uses relative text sizes, which enables users to change the size of the text proportionally to their own needs.

This can be done via several means:

User interface buttons in the segment branding

  • Reduces the text size by 10% with each click, down to 80% of the original text size.
  • Increases the text size by 10% with each click, up to 140% of the original text size.

Browser "View" menu

  • Select "View", then "Text size".
  • Options will vary depending on the browser, however all modern browsers provide the ability to scale the text size up or down.

Mouse scroll wheel/Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard

Mozilla Firefox, Safari.

Increasing text size
Holding down the "Control (Ctrl)" key, and simultaneously pressing the "+" key.
Decreasing text size
Holding down the "Control (Ctrl)" key, and simultaneously pressing the "-" key.
Scroll wheel (Windows only)

Internet Explorer (IE); Mozilla (Firefox);

Increasing text size
Holding down the "Control (Ctrl)" key, and scrolling down (towards you).
Decreasing text size
Holding down the "Control (Ctrl)" key, scroll the mouse wheel up (away from you).

* The text resizing options for Safari are in the "View" menu only, and are referred to as "Make Text Bigger"/"Make Text Smaller".

Style sheets (Site skins)

The website uses a number of alternate style sheets to cater to people with vision impairment (including partial and/or colour blindness), or are using displays that do not display websites at their optimum.

These different style sheets can be activated by using the widgets in the horizontal tool bar at the top of each page:

  • High contrast
  • Low contrast (this is the default setting, the widget only becomes visible when in high contrast mode)
  • Text only

Users of browsers such as Mozilla based browsers (Netscape/Firefox); as well as Opera and Safari may also change these settings using the browser's "View" menu.

Because the site template is driven purely by CSS(Cascading Style Sheets), users may also apply their own localized style sheets to enhance readability as required. This template enables users of the site with text based browsers, assistive technology, or wireless devices to also be able to access the site.