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 and will continue to do so.

We are aware, however, that occasionally we do make mistakes. If you find any of our pages inaccessible please use the contact us 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.

My Computer, My way

My Computer, My Way is AbilityNet’s easy to use guide to the accessibility features built into your desktop PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone. It can help with four areas that might cause you problems:

1. Vision – help with seeing your screen
2. Hearing – help with sounds and audio
3. Motor – help with keyboard and mouse difficulties
4. Cognitive – help with reading, spelling and understanding

My Computer, My Way Guide – AbilityNet

Resizing text

If the text is too small for you to read comfortably then you can resize it. 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: You should be able to resize the text directly from the menu bar. Please see your specific browser help pages if you are having difficulty

Reading the website

We aim to make our website as easy to read as possible and follow the Plain English principles. We are constantly working to improve our website and make it easier to understand.

Downloadable documents

We aim to provide content in html format where possible. Where we have to use different formats this will be because:

• the information is too long or too complex for a webpage
• the content is an official council document, for example a council strategy documents or meeting minutes
• the user is likely to want to print the content, for example a brochure
• the document is needed in its original format – for example, bus timetables
• documents are from other agencies or other systems – for example, government publications or reports

We are working to improve the accessibility of our documents.

Download document viewing software

Where possible we try to provide downloadable documents in the following formats:

• PDF – A reader can be downloaded free from the Adobe website (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided)
• XLS/XLSX – A reader can be downloaded free from the Microsoft website – XLS viewer (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided)
• DOC/DOCX – A reader can be downloaded free from the Microsoft website – DOC viewer (full instructions for downloading the reader are provided)

If you have difficulties obtaining information from a PDF you can use Adobe’s web-based conversion service to produce an HTML version. However, please be aware that the standard of HTML produced is not very good.

We appreciate that it is frustrating to be unable to access information. Please bear with us whilst we continue to work on improving the accessibility of our site.

If any downloadable document presents a barrier to accessing information, please contact us with details of the document in question, the problems encountered and what we could do to help.

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