Accessibility

We have endeavoured to make this website easy to use for all visitors irrespective of any disability.

It has been designed to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) standards. The Equality and Human Rights Commission guidelines advise that all websites should be designed in line with the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

The following information explains the standards adopted for the development of this site together with information to assist you in making it easier to use this website.

Site layout

The main sections of the site can be found along the top of the page. The left hand side of the page contains links related to each section. You can also navigate the site via the site map.

Accesskeys

The UK Government accesskeys standard has been followed and extended to allow direct access to the main sections of the site without the need to use either a mouse or a keyboard to tab through the site navigation links. The full set of available accesskeys is as follows:

Accesskeys Destination
0 Accessibility
1 Home
2 Skip navigation
3 Site map
4  
5 Mortgages
6 Savings
7 Insurance
8 Terms and conditions
9 Contact us
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How to use accesskeys:


Internet Explorer 5+ (PC)

Hold down the ALT key, press the number or letter of the access key, release both keys then press ENTER.

Internet Explorer 5+ (Mac)

Hold down the CTRL key and press the number or letter of the access key.

Netscape 6 and earlier (PC and Mac)

Not supported.

Netscape 7 (PC)

Hold down the ALT key and press the number or letter of the access key.

Firefox 2 (PC)

Hold down the SHIFT key and the ALT key and then press the number or letter of the access key.

Firefox 1.5 (PC)

Hold down the ALT key and press the number or letter of the access key.

Firefox 2 (Mac)

Hold down the SHIFT key and the ALT key and then press the number or letter of the access key.

Firefox 1.5 (Mac)

Hold down the CTRL key and press the number or letter of the access key.

Safari and Omniweb (Mac)

Hold down the CTRL key and press the number or letter of the access key.

Opera 9

Hold SHIFT and the ESC key and the list of access keys will appear.

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Website design standards

This site complies with the following standards:

  • W3C standards for cascading style sheets (CSS)
  • W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional standard
  • W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Version 1 conformance level "AA".

Colours, fonts and images

If you wish to change the colours or fonts we have used on this website you can make changes to your own browser settings to suit your requirements. You may also change your browser settings to prevent images being downloaded if you do not require these or simply to save download time of a page. Some browsers may allow the option to display the site without the use of our website style sheet. This will display the site in a plain layout view. Guidance on how to make these changes for some of the most common browser types is given below:

Internet Explorer:

  • Select 'Tools' then 'Internet Options'. On the 'General' tab, select 'Accessibility' and tick the options to ignore fonts and colours specified on web pages.
  • If you'd like to select alternative fonts. Select 'Tools', 'Internet Options', 'General' then 'Fonts' and select your required font from the available list.
  • If you'd like to select alternative colours. Select 'Tools', 'Internet Options', 'General' then 'Colours'. Remove the tick for 'Use Windows colours' and select desired text, background and link colours.
  • To change font sizes, select 'View', 'Text Size' and select the size you want.
  • To prevent images from appearing, select 'Tools', then 'Internet Options'. On the 'General' tab, select 'Advanced'. Scroll to the 'Multimedia' section. Change the options ('animations', 'videos', 'pictures' and 'images') to remove the ticks. Click on 'Apply' You may need to refresh the screen for changes to take effect.
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Firefox:

  • If you'd like to select alternative fonts. Select 'Tools', 'Options', 'Content'. Select your required font from the available options. Ensure that the 'Advanced' option 'Allow pages to choose their own fonts, instead of my selections above' has been unticked.
  • If you'd like to select alternative colours. Select 'Tools', 'Options', 'Content' select colours. Modify the colours from the available options. Ensure that the option 'Allow pages to choose their own colours, instead of my selections above' has been unticked.
  • To prevent images from appearing, select 'Tools', 'Options', 'Content'. Remove the tick from 'Load images automatically'.
  • To view the site without the site's style sheet in plain layout view select 'View' 'Page Style' and select 'No Style'.

Netscape:

  • To change fonts, click on 'Appearance' then 'Font'.
  • To change foreground and background colours, click on 'Appearance' then 'Colours'.
  • To prevent images from appearing, select 'Advanced' and remove the tick from 'Automatically load images'.

Problems

We hope you have not encountered problems whilst using our site. If you find that you encounter a particular issue with the accessibility of this site please let us know. We will endeavour to correct any problems as soon as possible.

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