Text size on this website

For accessibility reasons we have not used fixed-size text on this website. This is because Internet Explorer does not allow users to change the size of fixed-size text and so people with accessibility requirements cannot enlarge it.

However, there is no baseline for non-fixed size text. We have used the "em" unit to set our text size which is a proportional unit that can be over-ridden by the web browser. This is designed to look best at 'medium' settings. But this means that the resulting text size on the website is dependent on the settings of your web browser. If you have a 'small' setting then our text-size may therefore be too small.

Text size is a tricky problem for web designers. Text that is too small for some is too large for others. There is no text-size standard on the web and as you browse around you will find that some sites are more readable than others. This is because no one can agree on a baseline for text size.

If our site is un-readable because the text-size is too small there are solutions.

What to do if the text is too small.

• In Internet Explorer the simplest trick is to use the text-size defaults in the View menu.
• In most Mozilla browsers there is an equivalent text-size setting in the View menu.
• If these do not provide a good size then you can do the following - which most web browsers support:
  • Override the text-size specified by us with your own.
  • You can do this in Internet Explorer by going to Tools > Internet Options > Accessibility
  • There is an option that allows you to ignore our suggested font-size.
  • There is also an option that lets you specify your own style-sheet. We suggest you copy and paste the following styles into your own style-sheet file. You can then edit the font-size for your preferred setting.

    p { font-size:14px !important; }
span { font-size:14px !important; }
td { font-size:14px !important; }
body { font-size:14px !important; }
div { font-size:14px !important; }

  • To do this in any Mozilla-based browser such as Firefox then go to Tools > Options and use the font setting to set a minimum size or override our suggested sizes.

If the size is too small for you on this site then we apologise. We have tried to pick a suggested size that works best for most users. If a better web standard emerges for specifying fonts and sizes then we will adopt it and hope that browser programmers do too.

We suggest that you always run an up-to-date version of your web browser. You will find the web a much more user-friendly experience if you do.