Web Accessibility Statement

We aim to present all important information as HTML webpages, but often we create guides and easy read documents that you can download and print. These are in PDF (Portable Document Format) and Word document format. If you have any problems downloading or reading these files, you may need to download additional software:

• If you can't open a PDF file try downloading the latest Adobe Reader software
• If you can't open a Word document try downloading the latest Word viewer software

PDF files from April 2017 have been created to be accessible, but you can request an accessible version of any older files by emailing us at mtc@mencap.org.uk.

For example, you might like a document in large text, black and white, vanilla, or another language. We’ll do our best to make these available within a couple of weeks, but some requests may take longer depending on the scale of the work.

We want to make sure that the language we use on the website is Plain English. No jargon, no unnecessary language, just simple and useful information.

We are improving our Alternative Text (or Alt Text) for images so that only images that present valuable information are accompanied by alternative text for screenreader users. Alt Text will not accompany decorative images.

We use icons, images, videos and colour-coding on the website to help illustrate the text. This decision came out of many focus groups and interviews with people with a learning disability about the kind of website they wanted to use. The colour coding is designed to help you associate which pages are in different sections of the website. For example:

• Advice and support = teal
• Learning disability explained = blue
• About us = green
• Get involved = pink
• Stories and press releases = purple.

We’ve designed our website with large font sizes to make text easier to read. If you would like to increase it further, this BBC guide shows you how you can increase text size in your browser settings. The BBC has also produced a guide about how to magnify your screen within your browser.

You can also zoom in to magnify the text and images on the page by using the 'View' menu in your browser, or by pressing 'Ctrl' and '+' on the keyboard to zoom in and 'Ctrl' and '-' to zoom out.

Our website aims to meet WCAG 2.0 recommended colour contrast ratios, making text easier to read. We know there is work here to be done, and are working on this currently. This work should be complete by summer 2017. 

We know that some people find it easier to read text when the background and font are certain colours. For example, dark green text on a pale yellow background can be easier to read if you have dyslexia . You can download free fonts like Dyslexie and OpenDyslexic. Many browsers now enable you to change the colour of the background and text of your screen. This guide by the BBC shows you how to choose your own colours.

We are addressing some issues with our heading structure to make sure that all pages of our website follow a logical order and are easier to navigate. The entire site should have been checked by summer 2017.

When we add links in text, we make sure that the link text clearly describes the destination of that link, so that you end up exactly where you expected.

All videos on the website are hosted on Youtube and embedded in the web page. All videos offer optional captions, but we have a bit of work to do here, which we aim to address by summer 2017:

1. Add names of speakers to our captions in videos with more than one speaker so that it is always clear who is speaking.
2. Check automated captions to ensure that they are accurate.

If you’re using a screen reader or keyboard, use the ‘Skip to content’ link at the top of every page to skip the navigation and get to the content quickly.

If you use assistive technology, like a screen-reader, we want to make sure that our website’s technology and content works together to give you the best possible experience.

Our website will be compatible with:

• screenreaders
• screen magnifiers
• speech recognition software on your device.

Our website supports the latest versions of the following browsers, broken down by operating system: 

• Windows: Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer
• Mac OS X: Chrome, Firefox and Safari
• iOS:  Safari and Chrome
• Android: Chrome.

The following browsers are now out of date:

• Internet Explorer 11
• Safari 9
• Opera 34.

If you use one of these browsers we would recommend that you upgrade to the latest version or switch to a different browser like Chrome for a better experience.