Accessibility

We are committed to complying with the Disability Discrimination Act and have made significant improvements to our website in order to reduce the barriers experienced by people with disabilities.

By following Government guidelines, it is our policy to create pages to W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Priority 2 level (Double A).

In the future we aim to offer more online services and we are designing these to be level 3 (Triple A) compliant, although if we purchase "off-the-shelf" software this will be at least level 2 compliant.

We are aware, however, that occasionally we do make mistakes. If you find any of our pages inaccessible please use the Website Feedback Form to let us know. Please include details of the technology you are using and we will make every reasonable effort to either remove the barrier or provide the information in a format that you find acceptable.

Access keys
Resizing text
Low graphics pages
Downloadable documents

Access keys

If you have difficulty in using a mouse or similar devices, you can use keyboard shortcuts. We follow the government's access key system.

The keyboard shortcuts are:

0 - Accessibility
1 - Home page (logo)
2 - A-Z of Services (link under the search)
3 - Online Services (link under the search)
4 - Search field
5 - Complaints and Feedback (Quick links)
6 - Help (banner link)
7 - Print Friendly (footer link)
8 - Disclaimer (footer link)
9 - leave this one for now - Contact us (icons)
W - Widescreen (banner link)
B - Bigger
N - Normal
M - Smaller
S - Skip navigation (banner link)
T - Text only

How do I use the access keys for my browser?

Internet Explorer 5+: Hold down the ALT key and select the number/letter of the access key, then press ENTER.
Internet Explorer 4: Hold down the ALT key and select the number/letter of the access key.
Internet Explorer 5+ for Mac: Hold down the CTRL key and select the number/letter of the access key
Internet Explorer 4.5 for Mac: Access keys are not supported.
Netscape 6+: Hold down the ALT key and select the number/letter of the access key.
Netscape earlier versions: Access keys are not supported.
Mozilla: Hold down the ALT key and select the number/letter of the access key.

Resizing text

If the text is too small for you to comfortably read then you can resize it using the options in the top right hand corner of each page.

Additionally, instructions are given for major browsers below:

Internet Explorer 4:
Choose View>Internet Options…>Accessibility… and check the ignore font sizes specified on web pages option. Click OK, OK, and then you can alter the text size using the View>Text Size option

Internet Explorer (version 5 and later):
Choose Tools>Internet Options…>Accessibility… and check the ignore font sizes specified on web pages option. Click OK, OK, and then you can alter the text size using the View>Text Size option.
Mozilla FireFox
Select the keys CTRL and + (From menu: View, Text Size, Increase) together to increase text size and CTRL and - to reduce it (From menu: View, Text Size, Decrease).
All other browsers

should be able to resize the text directly from the menu bar. Please see your

specific browser help pages if you are having difficulty.

Low graphics pages

Although not strictly text-only, these pages are quicker to download and useful if you don't need the images or if you are on a slow connection.

Downloadable documents

Most of the files made available on the site will be either Microsoft Office or Adobe PDF files. Free software is available to view all these.

It is our policy to give you an indication of the file size for downloadable items so that you can judge whether or not it will take a long time to download on your particular connection.