My Web My Way was developed by AbilityNet and the BBC as a source of accessibility help for all computer users. It includes information on changing not only the colours and text size and style of our website, but will explain how these changes can be made to affect every site you visit if you wish.
We offer the following accessibility features on our site:
Our website strives to uphold the principles and best practice of the WCAG 1.0 AAA guidelines. While we aim to comply with the WCAG guidelines, we recognise that web technology has moved on since their creation, and a number of them are less applicable than at their time of publication. Our central objective is users finding our site accessible and usable in practice. As with all sites we create, attention to the accessibility of the code and extensive end user testing ensures that this is the case.
In September of 2007, we conducted a thorough audit of the accessibility and usability of our website with an established accessibility company. As well as an expert evaluation, the website was tested out with a group of users with different abilities. The results of this work were included in this design of the website.
The site has been built to comply with standards (x)HTML and CSS2. At every stage the code has been checked for accessibility using a range of automated and (more significantly) manual checks. In older browsers (Netscape and Internet Explorer 4 and earlier) it will appear as an unstyled document. All information and functionality will still be accessible.
At the top of every page is a hidden link that is spoken by screen-reading software and will appear when 'tabbed to' using a keyboard. It is the first link and, when selected, will make reading skip past the rest of the menu items and commence at the beginning of the main page content.
Throughout the navigation of this website, we have installed access keys so that you can get to different parts of the website using your keyboard rather than your mouse. They are highlighted with colour and additional text. Find out how to use access keys on the BBC MyWeb MyWay website.
You can also make our website talk by downloading the free text to speech software BrowseAloud. Simply install it and then move your mouse over any text, link, picture or button and BrowseAloud will speak it to you. The download is approximately 2.5Mb.
We welcome feedback on the Accessibility and usability of our website. If you have had any problems or any issues while using our site, we would like to hear about it! Email, phone and address details are on our contacts page.
