Accessibility

'Skip to content' link

In the header of every page there is an invisible ‘skip to content’ link, which can be accessed using the ‘tab’ key on your keyboard. This allows visitors who have an accessibility requirement to skip the header and menu, and go straight to the content of the page.

You can use the ‘tab’ key on the keyboard to quickly navigate to links on the page.

Accessibility guidance

We’ve included some links below from AbilityNet on how you can change your browser settings to suit your needs.

• make your mouse easier to use
• use your keyboard instead of a mouse
• talk to your device
• make your device talk to you
• make text larger
• change your colours
• magnify the screen

If you’d like to view this website in another language, or simply translate a section of content that you don’t understand, you can use an online translation plug-in such as Google Translate (available from ‘chrome web store‘).

Listen to pages

Most devices will have an in-built tool for people who want to have pages read to them.

Listen to this website with Narrator for Windows 

Windows comes with a basic screen reader called Narrator, which reads text on the screen aloud while you’re using the computer.

Listen to this website with VoiceOver for Max OS X

In newer versions of Mac OS X there is screen-reading technology already built into the system called VoiceOver.

Listen to this website with Spoken Feedback on Chrome OS

In Chrome OS there is a synthesized speech feedback option built into the accessibility features

Listen to this website on an iPhone or iPad

There are a wide range of accessible features on iOS devices such as iPhone and iPad.

Listen to this website on an Android device

Android devices also have a wide range of accessibility options to help the user.

Accessing PDF documents on our website

A lot of our older PDFs aren’t fully accessible. We’re aware of this, and are working to bring everything up to date. Any new PDFs published are always accessible.

If you want to listen to a PDF

Some browsers have in-built software for reading PDFs, but these don’t always work very well. We recommend that screen-reader users download the PDF, open in Adobe Reader and use your existing screen-reader software.

Your feedback

Each page on our website aims to achieve the following:

• plain english – no jargon.
• improved user experience – we’ve used analytical data to aid both the usability and readability of the site.
• titles that clearly describe what a page is about.
• responsiveness, which means that you can access the website on any device.