Accessibility
Language on government websites should be easy to understand. We have written this website in plain English to make sure users can find and understand the information they want.
We are also committed to making sure that information on our website is accessible, regardless of any impairment that you may have.
Access keys
Access keys are special web shortcut keys. They give keyboard or screen-reader users easy access to the main areas of a website.
You can only use access keys on Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4 and above, and Netscape 6 and above (including Firefox and Mozilla).
On a Windows system, press the ‘Alt’ key and the access key number or letter at the same time. Then press the ‘Enter’ key. Firefox or Opera users only need to press the 'Alt’ key and the number or letter.
On a Macintosh system, press the ‘Ctrl’ key and the access key number or letter at the same time.
The following access keys are available on this website:
1 – Home page
2 – What’s new
3 – Site map
4 – Search
5 – Consumer Advice
6 – Industry information
7 – Consultations/Media
8 – Hot topics
9 – Terms and conditions
0 – Feedback form
Text-only view
The text-only version of this website allows you to view the pages without images. This feature may be useful to you if you have a visual impairment or if your computer takes a long time to display pages with images.
To view the text-only version of a page, click on the ‘text-only’ button at the bottom of the page. To return to the graphics view, click on the ‘full graphics’ link at the bottom of the page.
Downloading PDFs
Files in this format have the PDF symbol next to them. To view and print PDF files, you must have Adobe® Acrobat® Reader installed. To download this product for free, please use this link: Adobe Acrobat Reader.
The RNIB has advice about using and converting PDFs. Our more recent PDFs are published as tagged, if you have any problems please contact us.
Downloading other files
Some files may be in zip, xls or doc file formats. They will have the relevant symbol next to them. If you have difficulty opening a document, right click on it and select ‘Save Target As…’ to save it to your computer.
Downloading zip files
The ZIP file format is a data compression and archive format. A ZIP file contains one or more files that have usually been compressed to reduce file size. To open, view and extract from zip files you must have a zip utility. Some operating systems come with a zip program already installed. If your do not have one you can download one of the following freely available programs:
Downloading doc and xls files
The doc and xls file formats are proprietary formats owned by Microsoft. If you do not have software that opens these file formats then you can download the Microsoft viewer. Alternatively, Open Office is an open source program and Google Docs is a web service that will allow you to open and edit doc or xls files
