We are committed to making our sites more accessible and are always looking for ways to make our websites and online services easier to use.
Where possible, we follow the guidelines developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) under the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) and the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).
Browser compatibility
You can view this website on a wide range of browsers and we have tested the pages of the site with the following browsers:
• Internet Explorer 5.5 (and upwards) (Windows)
• Safari 1.2 (and upwards)
• Firefox 1.5 (and upwards) (Windows)
• Opera 8 (and upwards) (Windows)
• Netscape 7.2 (and upwards) (based on the Firefox engine)
• AOL (based on the Internet Explorer engine)
Font
We have used a non-serif font as most people find this easier to read on a screen, chosen colours for our text that give good contrast with the background colours and allow you to change the font size.
Changing your font size
This section contains instructions on changing your font size. Mac users please note, where you are told to hold down control, please use the apple key instead. You can find instructions for the following browsers:
• Internet Explorer 8 and 7
• Internet Explorer 6
• Firefox 3
• Safari
Internet Explorer 8 and 7
You can adjust the size of the page in Internet Explorer 8 and 7 using the following methods:
• Hold down control and select + (plus) to increase the size of the page
• Hold down control and select – (minus) to decrease the size of the page
• Hold down control and select 0 (zero) to reset the page to its normal size
• Select the magnifying glass icon at the bottom right of the browser window to increase the page size
• Select the arrow next to it choose a zoom level
• You can also adjust the size of the text only by selecting the ‘view’ menu and then the ‘text size’ menu, and choosing an option.
Internet Explorer 6
You can adjust the size of the text by selecting the ‘view’ menu and then the ‘text size’ menu, and choosing an option.
Firefox 3
You can adjust the size of the page using the following methods:
• Hold down control and select + (plus) to increase the size of the page
• Hold down control and select – (minus) to decrease the size of the page
• Hold down control and select 0 (zero) to reset the page to its normal size
• Select the ‘view’ menu and then the ‘zoom’ menu, and choosing an option.
• You can also adjust the size of the text only by selecting the ‘view’ menu and then the ‘zoom’ menu, and choosing Zoom text only. The keyboard shortcuts will then alter the size of the text, but not the rest of the page
Opera
You can adjust the size of the page in Opera 9 using the following methods:
• Select + (plus) to increase the size of the page
• Select – (minus) to decrease the size of the page
• Hold down control and select 0 (zero) to reset the page to its normal size
• Select the arrow next to the magnifying glass icon at the bottom right of the browser window to choose a zoom level
Safari
You can adjust the size of the text in safari using the following methods:
• Hold down control and select + (plus) to increase the size of the text
• Hold down control and select – (minus) to decrease the size of the text
• Hold down control and select 0 (zero) to reset the text to its normal size
• Select the ‘view’ menu and then the ‘zoom’ menu, and choosing ‘Make Text Bigger’, ‘Make Text Smaller’, or ‘Make Text Normal Size’
If you use a screen reader
Not everyone uses a traditional browser, so we‘ve designed our sites to work with screen readers. We use text (in ALT tags) to describe images. We use descriptive links so you know where the link takes you, and we don‘t use frames which are difficult for screen readers and special browsers to interpret.
Adobe PDF is an Internet standard used to distribute electronic documents. Most electronic documents or images can be converted to a PDF document by using Acrobat software, and anyone can read these documents by using Acrobat or the free Adobe Reader software.