Accessibility

Our Vision

When designing and building this site our intention was to provide a resource that was both easy to use and highly accessible. We hope that we have achieved that goal but the only real way for us to find that out is for you to tell us about your experience of using the site. Please do not hesitate to contact us with any comments.

Browsealoud

Browsealoud is a free tool that can be used to speech enable the content of our website.

It may be helpful to:

Anyone with low literacy skills or dyslexia
People who don't have English as a first language
Those with some visual impairment
Anyone who would prefer to listen to text rather than read it.

Click on the logo to download the free Browsealoud software onto your computer, which will let you hear the text on our site, and other Browsealoud-enabled sites, as spoken word.

You can find more information, and support for downloading and installing the software, on the Browsealoud website.

Go to the Browsealoud Video Tour for further information

Access Keys

The following access keys have been set up in order to facilitate keyboard navigation of the site;

s Skip to Content
n Skip to Navigation

1 Home page
2 What's New
3 Site Map
4 Search
5 Health Services
6 Publications
7 Complaints
8 Terms and conditions
9 Contact Us
0 Accessibility information

To use these access keys hold down ALT, press the specified key and press ENTER. So to get to the homepage, hold down ALT + 1 then ENTER. Some software already has these keys reserved, but you can generally still use them on the number pad without difficulty.

Documents

Some documents on this site have been uploaded in Adobe Acrobat which is a file format allowing high compression of large documents which contain images. The reader for these files can be downloaded for free from: www.adobe.com

Adobe provides a service which renders Acrobat files in HTML format, which makes them easier for screen readers to access. This service can be used from here:

Adobe PDF Conversion by Simple Form

Hyperlinks

Many of the hyperlinks in this site have title attributes. These describe the link in greater detail, occasionally providing guidance if the link is to an external site or triggers the opening of a new browser window. If you use a mouse, you can view these titles by holding your pointer over the link. No essential information is held in the link titles, merely additional guidance.

Skip navigation links

An invisible 'Skip to Content' link appears at the top of every web page on our site. This link allows you to skip to the main part of the page. There is also a 'Skip to Navigation' link directly after it to enable you to skip straight to the top of the navigation bar. You can use these at any time by pressing the access keys ALT+s (Content) or ALT+n (Navigation) followed by ENTER.

Screen Resolutions

This site has been designed to take into account different screen resolutions with a fluid approach to page size. This way users who want to use a very high resolution on their monitors will see the pages stretch to fit the whole screen while users who favour very low resolutions (down to 640*480) will not find that the site requires horizontal scrolling.

Font Sizes

All fonts on this site are defined with relative sizes allowing you to choose your own text size. Different browsers have different methods for increasing the text size, but they are always found under the 'View' toolbar with a name like 'Text Size' (internet Explorer (IE)), 'Increase text' (Netscape) or 'Text Zoom' (Mozilla).

In addition, if you have a mouse with a wheel and use Internet Explorer, you can hold down the left CTRL key and roll the wheel up and down.

For more drastic alterations to the look and feel of the site, in IE, go to the 'Tools' menu and select 'Internet Options'. At the bottom of the window there is a tab called 'Accessibility' where you can turn off all defined fonts and CSS styles, thus rendering the site in whatever style you find most comfortable.

Images

All images used in this site include alt attributes, providing descriptive detail and replicating textual content where necessary. Some images that are purely for aesthetic reasons, such as curved edges on boxes, are assigned a blank alt tag, rather than a descriptive one, in order to simplify screen reader use of the site.