Accessibility statement
The Australian Museum is committed to ensuring that this website is accessible to everyone. If you have any questions or suggestions regarding the accessibility of this site, please contact us.
Page structure
Site name
Each page begins with the site name - "Australian Museum - inspiring the exploration of nature and culture" - as the primary heading.
"Skip to content"
Directly below the site name is a hidden "skip to content" link . This allows assitive device users to quickly skip over the site navigation to the page content.
Site navigation
The site navigation appears on the top of all pages. The navigation items are displayed as a list of links.
Local navigation is displayed on the left site of all pages where required.
Content
The main content appears to the right of the site navigation on all pages except the home page.
Footer information
At the bottom of the page are links to our Accessibility (this page), Acknowledgements, Credits, Copyright and Disclaimer pages.
Links
The content of all text-based links has been written to aid users with assistive devices. It is:
- Clear: giving you a good idea of what the destination page is about.
- Unique: each link is different, unless it leads to the same page as any others using the same wording.
- Complete: not relying on nearby text to explain its purpose or context.
- Concise: as short and to the point as possible.
Images
Concise text alternatives have been provided for all content-related images. Images that are purely decorative have not been given text alternatives.
Colour
Colours have been chosen to provide good contrast between text and backgrounds. We have avoided colour combinations that are known to cause difficulties for people with vision impairment.
Text size
The text on this websites can be resized up or down to suit your needs. This movie, provided by accessify.com, shows you how to resize your text in the main browsers. There is a full transcript below.
How to resize text - a visual guide
Text transcript
"If you are finding it difficult to read some text when viewing a web site you can resize the text up and down to suit your needs. However, by default web browsers - for example Internet Explorer and Firefox - do not make it obvious that you can do this; effectively they hide these useful controls.
Using Internet Explorer, otherwise known as IE, you can change the font size by selecting the View menu item and then selecting the Text Size option - you have 5 size settings to pick from. This is useful to know and once you select this setting, it is remembered for all web sites that you visit.
A better option is to place a text resize control permanently on your toolbar. To do this, press your right mouse button on the toolbar area to bring up the contextual menu and choose 'Customize'. A list of available toolbar buttons appears on the left. Scroll down to the Text icon and then select 'Add'. You can also change the display of the icons while you're here, just in case you find the toolbar icons a little small too. Once you hit the close button, you'll see a Text Size control there, making it much easier to change the size.
If you are using IE 7, the process is much the same - right click on the toolbar, but you need to select 'Customize Command Bar' then 'Add or Remove Commands'.
In Firefox, you can increase the font size in a similar way to Internet Explorer. Unlike IE, you are not limited to 5 sizes (that being two notches up and two notches down from the default).
Unfortunately Firefox does not provide a toolbar icon for text resizing, even if you choose to customise. However, Patrick Lauke from the University of Salford has created an extension that creates a set of buttons that you can add to your toolbar. Simply go to the Firefox Extensions page and search for the 'Text Size Toolbar', or go to tinyurl.com/2ztudx. Once you've installed the extension and restarted Firefox, right click on your toolbar and choose customise. There you will find the resize buttons which you can drag and drop on to your toolbar.
There are other ways that you can change text size on a web page. If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, simply hold down the CTRL key - or the command key if you are a Mac user - and move the scroll wheel up and down. For Firefox users, hold down the CTRL key and press the plus (+) and minus (-) keys. Finally, if you are using Internet Explorer 7, you can hold down the CTRL key and press the plus or minus keys, which will zoom the whole page in and out of view."