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Accessibility

We are committed to providing services that are easy to use and available to people with physical disabilities. This page gives some advice on the accessibility of our online services. As much as possible, we have tried to follow the guidelines of the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

These include:

  • Using meaningful ALT text for images and providing descriptive text of significant images
  • Providing text descriptions of multimedia content on our site
  • Using descriptive link titles
How to get the most out of our website
You can change some of the options in your Internet browser (at the top of this window), and using the latest version of Internet Explorer you should be able to:
  • Alter the size and colour of most text (but not images)
  • Alter the background colour (black text on a yellow background gives the most contrast)
  • Alter the line length, by changing the size and shape of your browser window
Changing the font
Using a sans serif font (such as Arial), rather than a serif font (such as Times New Roman) can make text easier to read. Our website uses Arial as a default font type but should you wish to change this, just follow these steps:
  1. On the 'Tools' menu, select 'Internet Options'
  2. On the 'General' tab, select 'Fonts'
  3. In the 'Web Page Font' list, select the font you would like to use
  4. Select the 'Accessibility' section and check the 'ignore font styles specified on web pages' option.
Displaying text larger or smaller
  1. On the 'Tools' menu select 'Internet Options'
  2. Select the 'General' tab and then 'Accessibility'
  3. Select the option 'ignore font size specified on web pages' (this will increase the standard font size used slightly)
or
  1. On the 'View' menu, select 'Text Size'
  2. Select an option ranging from 'smallest' to 'largest'
Changing text and background colour
Website authors and designers often specify particular fonts, typefaces and background colours for their pages, and the combinations can sometimes make the text difficult to read. We have used black text on a white background throughout our website, however, you can override these settings by choosing your own colour scheme - black text on a yellow background gives the most contrast.
  1. On the 'Tools' menu, select 'Internet Options'
  2. On the 'General' tab, select 'Colors'
  3. Uncheck the option 'Use Windows Colors'
  4. Select 'Text' and choose the colour you want - Click 'OK'
  5. Select 'Background' and choose the colour you want - Click 'OK'
  6. Close the 'Colors' window by clicking on 'OK'
  7. In the 'Accessibility' section select the option 'ignore colours specified on web pages'
To close images on web pages
  1. On the 'Tools' menu, select 'Internet Options'
  2. Select the 'Advanced' tab and scroll down to 'Multimedia'
  3. Uncheck the option 'Show pictures'
  4. Click on 'Apply' and then click 'OK'
  5. You may need to refresh, empty your cache or restart your browser for these changes to take effect
To change the size of the window
  1. Click 'Full Screen' either via your toolbar or the 'View' menu
There are more options to make websites easier to read, such as removing animation and expanding text. To look at the other options:
  1. On the 'Tools' menu, select 'Internet Options'
  2. Select the 'Advanced' tab and choose the options you would like.
    To return to the top of the page clich here.