Accessibility

We are committed to providing websites that are accessible to everyone in the community. This is a requirement under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992.

Our website has been designed to meet the Australian Government standard established for web accessibility. WCAG 2.0 is a technical standard developed under the Web Accessibility Initiative of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

www.awm.gov.au is currently meets  Level A of the Web content accessibility guidelines version 2.0 - external site (WCAG 2.0) standard. 

We are working on meeting  Double A compliance, and where possible Level Triple A.

Providing our information to all users, including those with a disability, is important to us. If anything on this site is inaccessible to you, or you are experiencing problems accessing content for any reason, please contact us.

If you do not wish to send an online form, you can send your comments in writing to the email address webmaster@awm.gov.au.

This website has been designed to ensure that:

  • it works well across the majority of popular web browsers
  • download times have been minimised as much as possible
  • all Australians, including those with a disability or with technical limitations can access the information on our site

Here are some ways that you can change the view of the site as well as the accessibility features available.

Search and search options

You can search our website by clicking on the search box in the top right of any web page or in the search input box on the home page.

 

home page screen shot

Once you have clicked on the top right hand search box, the advance search page will open. You can then enter in key words on the topic you are interested in.

You can either specify the type of content you want to search (Military events, Unity, Places, Library, People, Articles and Collections) or you can search across all content on our website.

Search page screen shot

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs show the location of the page you are viewing in the hierarchy of its category. They’re just under the top navigation bar on every webpage.

To return the previous page you were viewing, click on the 'Back' button in your browser or use one of the navigation tools to go directly to the page you want.

Change the size of the text

To change the size of the text, change the text display settings in your web browser.  

In Windows this is done in different browsers by:

  • in Internet Explorer go to the View menu and select the Text size option, then the size you prefer
  • in Firefox 1.5 / 2 open the View menu with the mouse or by selecting Alt and V at the same time.  Select the Text Size option with the mouse or select Z. Increase or decrease the text size with the mouse or by using the up and down arrow keys and selecting Enter.
  • in Firefox versions earlier than 1.5 open the View menu with the mouse or by selecting Alt and V at the same time. Select the Text Size option with the mouse or by selecting S twice.  Increase or decrease the text size with the mouse or by using the up and down arrow keys and selecting Enter.
  • In Netscape click on the View menu with the mouse or select Alt + V .  Click on the Text Zoom option with the mouse or select Z. Click on the text size you want with the mouse or use the up and down keys and then Enter to select the text size you want.
  • In Opera press + (in some versions you might need to select the Shift key as well) to increase size and the - (minus) to decrease text size. Each click will increase or decrease the size by 10%. Alternatively select Alt + V to bring up the view menu and then select Z to bring up the zoom options then use the up and down arrow keys to select the option you want followed by Enter.

In Mac this is done in different browsers by:

  • in Firefox, Internet Explorer or Netscape 7 select Apple and + (plus) to increase the text size and Apple and - (minus ) to decrease the text size
  • in Opera for OS 8 and 9, select Apple + Y.  Click on Fonts and colors or use the down arrow to select it. Click in the box next to Minimum font size (pixels) or use Tab until the box is highlighted and enter a minimum font size
  • in Opera 8 / 9 for OS X select Apple + , (comma). Click on the Web pages tab or select Alt + Tab until the Web pages tab is selected. Click on the Page Zoom option box and select your zoom size or use the Tab key twice to select the page zoom option box and use the up and down arrow keys to select your zoom size.
  • in Safari click on the View menu with the mouse. Click on Make Text Bigger or Make Text Smaller to change the font size

In Linux this is done in different browsers by:

  • in Firefox open the View menu with the mouse or by selecting Alt + V. Click Text Size. Click on Increase or Decrease to change the text size or use the right arrow to expand the Text Size menu options and use the up and down arrow to select Increase or Decrease and then select Enter
  • in Konqueror select Ctrl and + (plus) to increase the text size and select Ctrl + - (minus) to decrease the text size
  • in Opera 8 /9 select Shift and + to increase size and Shift + - to decrease text size. Each time you repeat this will increase or decrease the size by 10%.
  • in Opera 6 /7 click on the File menu or select Alt + F. Click on the Preferences option or select R. Select Page Style. Click on the box under Default Zoom and when the list pops up click on the font size you want or select Alt + Z and use the up and down arrows to select the font size you want

Navigation using a screenreader

If you are using a screenreader program, there are a number of aids to help you find your way around the website.

Skip to content

For people using screen readers each page has a link that says "skip to content". Following this link will skip over the page header and skip over the navigation menu to take you straight to the content of the page. The page header and navigation are repeated on every page so this avoids hearing them again and again.

Skip to navigation

For people using screen readers each page has a link that says "Skip to navigation". Following this link will skip over the page header and go to the main site navigation menu. The page header is repeated on every page so this avoids hearing it again and again.

Help with downloading documents and files

There are many documents and media files for download on the website. Here are a few tips about accessing those resources.

Some documents are available in a variety of formats

Some documents are published in more than one format. Web pages are made available in HTML where feasible.

This website has a  number of documents that cannot be provided in HTML format. Also, to assist users to download and share web content, some documents are available in Portable Document Format (PDF). We have taken steps to ensure where possible that alternate formats are available, commonly Rich Text Format (RTF).

Formats for documents which may be provided include Microsoft Word (doc), Rich Text Format (RTF), Portable Document Format (PDF), Zip for larger files, HTML for web browsers and basic text (txt).

Some documents are also published in easy to read formats.

Help with accessing PDF files

To read PDF documents you need Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. 

Commonly this is already on your computer, installed with your web browser. But if you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader you can download it for free from adobe.com

Downloading documents

You can download documents and open them to read in your web browser or save them to your computer to read offline.

To read a downloadable document in your web browser simply click the link to the document.

To save a downloadable document right-click on the download (PC) or shift + click (Mac) and select the Save link or Save target option.

Plain and simple language

We have tried to write the information on this web site in plain and simple language so it is easy to understand for as many people as possible.