Accessibility
Derwentside College is committed ensuring our college is a welcoming and inclusive environment in which to learn and work by championing equality, promoting inclusion and celebrating difference. Our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Committee comprises subgroups covering the following areas:
- Curriculum and learners
- Staff
- Wellbeing
And this structure helps us in achieving our E, D & I aims:
- To ensure fair treatment for all learners and staff, particularly with regards their protected characteristics .
- To celebrate the diversity of our workforce and learners, and our society, by raising awareness, increasing understanding, leading events and campaigns, and promoting causes;
- To compile and monitor the college’s Equality Action Plan;
- To ensure the college meets its obligations under the Equality Act 2010;
- To monitor gaps in achievement between different groups of learners and make recommendations on how to close them;
- To drive positive attitudes around mental health and wellbeing, and caring for each other at work.
One of the ways we seek to do this is by ensuring website accessibility for all of our users and we will look to continue to improve accessibility on our website and other platforms.
Font size
To increase or decrease the size of the text on the website it is best to use your keyboard and your browsers built in accessibility features. In most cases you can hold CTRL and + (command and + on a Mac) together to increase the text size. To decrease the size CTRL and – (command and – on a Mac). You can also increase or decrease the screen size by using the wheel of your mouse whilst holding down the CTRL key.
Read Aloud
Our website supports use of the Read Aloud function available on Microsoft Edge and other web browsers. To utilise this function, hold the CTRL, Shift and U keys together.
Navigating without a mouse
Use the ‘tab’ key to move around the links on a webpage, pressing ‘enter’ when the right link is selected to move to that page.
Other accessibility features of internet browsers
Most browsers have a number of other accessibility features that can be tailored to an individuals needs through the ‘settings’ function on the browser.
Derwentside College Systems
In College we use Microsoft 365 which is provided to all users and has built in accessibility tools. Canvas is used as our virtual learning environment and we also use Smart Assessor to track our apprentices.
Further assistance
Further assistance can be sought from our team in the Learning Resource Centre, individual class tutors or our reception team can point you in the right direction for either support or information in an alternative format – contact them on 01207 585900 or enquiries@derwentside.ac.uk
Useful resources
AbilityNet supports anyone living with any disability or impairment to use technology to achieve their goals at home, at work and in education.
ATbar has been created as an open-source, cross-browser toolbar to help users customise the way they view and interact with webpages. ATbar is free and allows you to change the look and feel ofwebpages, increase or decrease font sizes, have text read aloud, use coloured overlays, readability and a dictionary to aid reading. It is a simple too which is available for most browsers.
