Web accessibility - Making it easier for everyone to use our site
At Nationwide we understand that every visitor to this site has different needs and abilities. We want to make your experience on this site an enjoyable and rewarding one, regardless of your ability or personal situation. This page covers some of the adjustments that you can make in your browser to make it easier to access our websites.
[If you are interested in the more technical aspects, you can learn more about our web accessibility conformance at the end of this page.]
Help with Internet Banking
Our Internet Banking service is easily adapted for use by partially sighted members. For example, you can:
- alter the size and colour of most text (but not images) in your browser
- choose from a predefined colour scheme/style, including a high contrast setting (this is available inside Internet Banking's Preferences section)
- resize the browser window to achieve the optimum line length (the bank uses a 'liquid' design that re-flows to your window size)
Internet Banking is also very screen-reader friendly - we test each new feature added to the bank using JAWS, the most commonly used screen reader.
Help with our Internet site
Every care and consideration has been given when building our Internet site so that it will be compatible with most assistive technology, including screen readers and screen magnification tools. Our pages feature proper headings and subheadings, lists for blocks of navigation, skip navigation links and forms that can easily be used and navigated by keyboard alone.
Nationwide routinely checks web pages - when amendments are made to existing pages and when new pages are released - to ensure that they meet our accessibility requirements, and we do respond positively to feedback regarding the accessibility of any of our pages or services.
Setting up your browser
Further instructions on how to configure your browser for our main product information pages (nationwide.co.uk) and also for Internet Banking are on our Setting up your browser section.
There is also an excellent resource on the BBC website entitled My Web My Way, which covers ways that you can change your browser to work better on the web for you, whether you are a Windows, Mac or Linux user.
Accessibility Conformance and Technical Details
Nationwide is a long-time supporter of web accessibility and aims to provide a first class service for all our website visitors, regardless of ability. Our web pages conform to Level A of the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines but in many cases exceed this level. Some of the features that we have used on our site include:
- form fields with associated label tags
- selection lists that are activated using an associated 'Go' button (not activated by changing the selection list with the keyboard alone)
- clear link phrases are used throughout (no 'click here' links)
- all content is keyboard-navigable
- web pages are styled using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Keyboard Navigation
If you are using a recent screen reader, you should be able to navigate through the site using the following keyboard commands:
- H to move forwards through the page headings
- Shift + H to move backwards through the page headings
- 1 to navigate to the next level 1 heading (or 2 for the next level 2 heading, and so on to heading level 6)
- Shift + 1 to navigate to the previous level 1 heading (same applies for headings level 2-6)
- Insert + F6 to get a list of all headings on the page
Opera Users
Opera users can use the following keyboard commands to navigate through headings on a page:
- S to cycle forwards through the headings
- W to cycle backwards through the headings