Accessibility Information

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This web site sets out to follow the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative's (WAI) Guidelines.

We are actively working towards our goal of compliance with level AA for all our web site content.

If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer, go to the "View" menu in the browser tool bar, select "Text size" and select your required size - either larger or smaller.
If you are using Netscape Navigator, go to the "View" menu in the browser tool bar, select "Increase Font" or “Decrease Font” and until the text is the required size.

Changing colours

Changing the site's background colour can be particularly useful for users who rely on magnification technology as white can produce an uncomfortable glare. It is also possible to change the colour of body text on the site. Both can be achieved by changing preferences in your browser:

If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, go to the "Tools" menu, select "Internet Options", select "Colors" and make changes to text and background colours in the Colors panel. Then choose the "Accessibility" button and tick the box labelled "Ignore colours specified on Web"
If you use Netscape Navigator, go to the "Edit" menu, select "Preferences", open the "Appearance" menu and select "Colors". You can set the colour of text and background from here.

Browsealoud

If you have difficulty in reading on-screen text then our site has been speech enabled for use with Browsealoud software. This free software will allow you to have our site "read" to you - download the free Browsealoud software

Access Keys

This web site supports the use of access keys, which enables the user to navigate the site using keyboard shortcuts. A list of access keys defined for this site is available.

Viewing PDFs (Portable Document Format)

Many of the Council's leaflets and application forms are available on the site for downloading. Most of these documents are in PDF format which means they can only be viewed using Adobe Reader. This software is available free of charge from the Adobe Web site

All PDF documents on this site will open in a new Web browser window. After viewing or printing the document, you can close the new Web browser window by using the close button at the top right hand corner.

Adobe also offer other useful resources and tools to aid the accessibility of PDFs, these can be accessed via the Access Adobe website, and include an online conversion tool for PDFs.

Further information on viewing and downloading documents.

Listening to PDFs - Read Out Loud

The latest version of Adobe Reader, version 7, comes with the ability to "read" the PDF content to you. This function known as "Read Out Loud" can be accessed as follows:

With the PDF you want read to you open in Adobe Reader 7, go to the "View" menu and select "Read Out Loud", you will then have the option to "Read This Page Only" or "Read To End Of Document".