Accessibility

The site is laid out to make finding information easy and intuitive. If you have any problems finding what you require, try using the keyword search located near the top right of every page.

Scaling text

If you have trouble reading the text on the site, you can increase (or decrease) the size using your browser. Here is how you do it in each of the two main browsers:

Microsoft Internet Explorer

• Hold down the Alt key and press V
• Then press X
• Select one of the preset text sizes by using either Up Arrow or Down Arrow key and pressing Return / Enter

Firefox

• Increase text size – Whilst holding down the Control key, press +
• Decrease text size – Whilst holding down the Control key, press –
• Opera
• Increase text size – Whilst holding down the Shift key, press +
• Decrease text size – Whilst holding down the Shift key, press –

Changing colours

Changing the site’s background colour can be particularly useful if you rely on magnification technology – as white can produce an uncomfortable glare.

It is also possible to change the colour of body text on the site. You can do both by changing preferences in your browser:

In Microsoft Internet Explorer:

• go to the Tools menu
• select Internet Options
• select Accessibility
• put a tick in the box next to “Ignore colors specified on web pages”
• select OK
• select Colors
• ensure no tick in the box next to &qout;Use windows colors”
• use Text and Background colour selectors
• confirm colours OK
• confirm options OK

In Firefox:

• go to the Tools menu
• select Options
• within options select Content
• select Colors
• ensure no tick in the box next to “Allow pages to choose their own colors”
• ensure no tick in the box next to “Use system colors”
• use Text and Background colour selectors
• confirm colours OK
• confirm options OK
• use function key F5 to refresh the screen

In Opera:

• Tools menu, Preferences and selecting web pages or;
• View menu, Style and selecting user mode
• We recommend that you experiment with the settings to get the effect that makes it easiest for you to acess the information

Opening documents

Many documents on our website are PDFs.

You can download PDF documents using Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you don’t already have this, you can download the latest version from the Adobe website.

If you use screen reader software (for example an audio-enabled web browser), and it is not compatible with Adobe Reader, Adobe provide a free online tool to convert the content of PDF files to text – so they can be understood by most screen reader applications. You can also download this from their website.