Accessibility

Commitment to Accessibility

The Council is committed to making its website as accessible as possible to users with disabilities, including users who may be blind, partially sighted, or have a physical disability. The design of our website includes a number of accessibility features including:

Browsealoud speech enabled website

Visitors to Barnet Online may listen to the website content by using Browsealoud. Browsealoud is a free tool which is used to speech enable a website. It may assist the following:

People with dyslexia
People with a mild visual impairment
People with low literacy and reading skills
People for whom English is not their first language

Resizable text

A common design throughout rather than providing text only pages for disabled users, and allowing text sizes to be changed to suit the users needs. We have been careful to make sure that we have not fixed the size of the textual information on the website so that visitors who wish to can alter the font size on the screen to make it easier to read.

There are a number of ways to change the text size in your browser, the easiest way is to follow the following steps:

(In Internet Explorer)

Select the 'View' menu.
Select the 'Text Size' option from the menu.
Click on the text size you want to view.

(In Netscape Navigator)

Select the 'View' menu.
Select the 'Increase Font' option from the menu.
Click on the text size you want to view.

(In Firefox Mozilla)

Select the 'View' menu.
Select the 'Text Size' option from the menu.
Click on the text size you want to view.

Using your mouse scroll wheel to increase (or decrease) the size of text

It is also possible to increase the size of the text by holding down the ctrl key on the bottom left hand row of the key board whilst using the scroll wheel on the mouse to increase (or decrease) the size of the text.

Using Access keys

The ability to navigate the site using other means than a mouse can be important for those who have difficulties in using a mouse or other pointing device. To help with this we have set up 'Access Keys' on the site which allows easy navigation to the main pages on the website.

As well as helping those who have difficulty using a Mouse it also allows quick access to the main pages for anyone who prefers to use the keyboard.

We use the standard UK Government access keys. These are:

1. Back to Home Page
2. What's new?
3. Site index
4. Search the site
5. A - Z of services
6. Help
7. Complaints procedure
8. Disclaimer
9. Contact us - Feedback form
0. Access keys details

To use the access keys on this site

Follow these steps:

Press and hold the 'alt' key
Press the required number (on keyboard)
Press the return key and the browser will load the relevant page. (This step is not required in the Firefox, Mozilla browser)

Please note Access Keys may not work on all browsers.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts control various browser functions and are often a useful and quick way of navigating through a site.

For the vast majority of browsers, use your Tab key to navigate forward through links (use Shift + Tab to go backwards), and Enter to activate the link.

Many other keys can be used, and will vary depending on the browser and operating system you are using. To find the shortcuts for your browser, follow these steps if your computer is running Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator on Windows:

Internet Explorer - Press your F1 key to open the online help and in the index, type "keyboard shortcuts", select the required option and click "display".
Netscape Navigator - Press your F1 key to open the online help and in the index, type "keyboard".
Firefox -Mozilla - Press your F1 key to open the online help and in the index, select "keyboard Shortcuts".

Images and alt tags

We have avoided using excessive graphics within the website where possible to ensure quick download times and access to information which cannot be read if in image format.

Where images have been used we have added 'Alt' tags - text alternatives so that you will still know what the image is meant to convey even if it does not load or if you've have chosen to browse with the images switched off or you are using an assistive technology like a screen reader to browse the webpage rather than view.

Coding standards and the use of Cascading style sheets

This website is built using code compliant with World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for XHTML and Cascading Style Sheets. W3C is the governing authority on web development standards and practices. Our website has been designed to be as accessible to as many users as possible, and has been developed using Cascading Style Sheets

We strictly avoid the use of framesets throughout the main council website.

The site displays correctly with current browsers, and using standard XHTML code means that any future browsers will also display this website correctly.

We are continuously improving this website to ensure that pages conform to the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. The Accessibility Guidelines explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities. Conformance to these Guidelines helps to make the Web more accessible to users with disabilities and benefits all users.

GIS (Mapping) System

The Council strives to meet the needs of computer users with visual impairment or other conditions that limit accessibility. Due to the graphics-intensive nature of the mapping part of the site, the geographic information cannot be presented in an accessible format. If you would like assistance with this please contact the GIS Team on 020 8359 7297 or GITeam@barnet.gov.uk

There may be a few pages that do not conform to all the guidelines. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the whole site conforms, with so many contributors, this is an ongoing process.

PDF Documents

This site uses PDF (Adobe Acrobat) file format for the publication of large and complex documents. Please note that Adobe Acrobat documents can be converted back to plain text using Adobe's Web-based conversion service.

Please read our PDF help pages

Report an accessibility problem

We are constantly working to improve the accessibility features of www.barnet.gov.uk and really would welcome your suggestions and comments. We will be undertaking a further review of this site to introduce more measures and features to improve its accessibility standards.

If you encounter an accessibility or technical problem with any page on this site, please e-mail the corporate web team at webmaster@barnet.gov.uk or complete the website feedback form.