Autism West is committed to ensuring our website and its content is accessible to people of all abilities.

In order to allow all users to access and enjoy content, Autism West is currently in the process of updating this site to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Level A standards as recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Australian Government.

While every effort is being made to ensure compliance, we acknowledge that there are still pages that may not have achieved this just yet. If you have found an accessibility issue on this site, please contact us so we can address the problem.

Design

Autism West understands that our website is accessed on a growing number of different devices, including mobile phones, personal computers, laptops and tablets. Our website has been designed to respond to the device being used and display in the most effective way.

Accessibility

Internet Browser

Using an up-to-date browser (the program you use to access the internet) you will have access to a much richer set of options to aid you as you navigate your way around this site.

The most used browsers can be downloaded and installed below:

Mozilla FireFox
Google Chrome
Safari (For Mac PCs)
Internet Explorer
Edge

Each browser offers its own selection of accessibility options and may allow further options via the use of plug-ins. For more details see the Accessibility page for each one:

Firefox
Google (including Chrome)
Apple (all Apple Products)
Internet Explorer
Edge

Text Size

Recent versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and all web browsers contain many accessibility features that can assist computer users that are blind or vision impaired.

Microsoft Windows users:
Hold down the ‘Ctrl’ (Control) key on your keyboard.
Press the ‘+’ key to make the text bigger or the ‘-‘ key to make the text smaller.
Keep repeating the above step until the text is at a suitable size.
Alternatively you can use your mouse wheel instead of the + and – keys.

Mac / OSX users:
Hold down the ‘Command’ (cmd or Apple logo) key on your keyboard.
Press the ‘+’ key to make the text bigger or the ‘-‘ key to make the text smaller.
Keep repeating the above step until the text is at a suitable size.

Alternatively Autism West has a website plugin that increases the font size, this plugin is accessible on the left hand side of the web page.

Colour Contrast

To turn on your computer’s screen colour contrast use the following keyboard shortcuts:

Microsoft Windows users:
Press the ‘Alt’ + left ‘Shift’ + ‘PrtScn’ (PrintScreen) keys together to open the dialog box. Select ‘Yes’ to turn on High Contrast.

Mac / OSX users:
The easiest way to change the colours is to use the built-in ‘reverse’ feature in Mac OS 10.4 Tiger or higher. This will reverse all colours on the screen.
Press the ‘Command’ (cmd or Apple logo) + ‘Ctrl’ + ‘Option’ (or Alt) + ‘8’ keys to invert the colours of your screen.
Note: This function will not work until you go to System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Accessibility and tick the “Invert Colors” box.

Alternatively Autism West has a website plugin that toggles high contrast for you, this plugin is accessible on the left hand side of the web page.

Text-to-Speech

Windows
“Narrator” is a basic built in screen reader available for Windows. You can access Narrator through “Ease of Access Center” (Windows logo key + U). Further information about Narrator can be found on the Microsoft accessibility website.

Mac OS
Mac OS 10.4 Tiger and higher have a built-in program called “VoiceOver” which can read aloud text on your computer screen, including web pages. To turn on VoiceOver, hold down the ‘Command’ (cmd or Apple logo) key and press the ‘F5′ key. Further information about VoiceOver is available on the Apple website.

Alternatively Autism West has a website plugin that reads text for you, to access this plugin simply highlight the line/s of text you would like read to you, a blue and white icon with a speaker will appear, click the icon and make sure you have your computer’s speakers on and the volume up.

Alternative format downloads

In line with WCAG 2.0 Level AA requirements, Autism West has taken steps to ensure that information contained within downloadable PDFs can also be accessed via an alternative format such as HTML or a Microsoft Word document. However, some older PDFs may not have an alternative available.

If you require one of these PDFs in an alternative format please contact us so that we can provide a suitable alternative.

Graphics and images

All graphics and images used on this website are in the process of having alternative text provided.