Accessibility

We are committed to making every effort to ensure our website is accessible to those with special needs including those with visual, hearing, cognitive or motor impairments.

We strive to adhere to the spirit of the UK Disability Discrimination Act 1995 with respect to the provision of services online, as required by the Disability Rights Commission and to ensure that our website is accessible in accordance with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines. If you come across a page you find difficult to use please let us know.

This WordPress based website has been designed to be as accessible as possible and to be compatible with adaptive technology including those using screen readers.

NB: We have used tables in this website but only to present tabular data, not to dictate page layouts.

Zoom

Chrome

CTRL+ Increase zoom
CTRL – Decrease zoom
CTRL0 Default

Internet Explorer

Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, then tap Settings. If you’re using a mouse, point to the bottom-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer up, then click Settings.
Tap or click Options.
Under Appearance, move the Zoom slider to increase or decrease zoom.

Safari

Safari hold the Command key and press the plus or minus buttons. This will proportionally increase or decrease the size of text and images.

Firefox

To increase the size, press and hold commandCtrl while pressing +.
To decrease the size, press and hold commandCtrl while pressing -.
Reset size back to normal, press and hold commandCtrl while pressing 0.

Change text size

Chrome

Open the Google Chrome Options, select the Under the Hood tab and click the Fonts and Languages button. The dialog that opens allows you to adjust your font settings. More about accessibility settings in Chrome

Internet Explorer 

Open the desktop, and then tap or click the Internet Explorer icon on the taskbar.
Press the Alt key to display the menu bar.
Tap or click View, and then tap or click Text size.
Choose to make text larger or smaller than the size on the screen.

Firefox

Press the Alt key to temporarily bring up the traditional Firefox menus. On the menu at the top, click View, then go to Zoom.
Select Zoom Text Only. This makes the controls only change the size of text; not images.

Safari 

From the tool bar, select Edit (Alt + E).
Select Preferences (Shift + N). This will open a new window.
Select Appearance on the top bar of this new window.
Select Standard font. This will open a new window.
Select the font size you want.
Close both boxes and the text should be in the size you have just set.

PDF files

PDF documents are available on this website. Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need to download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. The reader program download filesize is about 20MB.

Reading PDFs

When you select the link to a PDF, it will open in your browser window.

A toolbar will appear below the browser address bar, featuring a number of tools to help you view and search the document.

If you use a mouse, running your mouse over the icons in PDF reader, without clicking, will tell you what each of them does.

Especially useful are the page size tools (which look like 3 pages). You can use these or the dropdown view menu (bottom left hand corner of the screen) to select a suitable view.

PDF help for people with visual difficulties

If you have any problems reading PDF files, the following tools are available:

Convert the PDF document to html: email the PDF or its web address as an email attachment to pdf2html@adobe.com. The converter will email back the translation as an html file.

Convert the PDF document to plain text: email the PDF or its web address as an email attachment to pdf2txt@adobe.com. The converter will email back the translation as a plain text file.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes a PDF file will open but only a blank page is visible. This may be because the view is zoomed into a blank section of the document. Use the dropdown view menu (bottom left hand corner of the screen) to select a suitable view, 100% or ‘Fit Width’ are usually best.

It may also be because the you are using an older version of the Adobe Acrobat  reader, you may want to upgrade to the latest version of the reader available from the Adobe website.

If you are still having problems, try clicking on the link to the PDF file you want to see with your right mouse button (Control-click on Mac). This will bring up a small menu – if you select ‘Save Target As’ (or Save Link As) from this you will be able to save the file and open it outside the browser.

For more help visit the Adobe reader help and support web site.