Accessibility Statement

This page states our intention that our website is usable and accessible to all users and details some of the measures taken. This website conforms to the Guidelines for UK government websites that support the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, Level AA, to ensure a Web accessibility standard has been achieved and is maintained.

This accessibility statement applies only to the Central Office of Information website at www.coi.gov.uk. This policy does not apply to any other site, including:

Other websites operated by or for COI
Other government departments and agencies
Any site that is linked from one of our pages

Access keys
The UK Government Access Keys Standard has been applied to this site. These provide a keyboard shortcut for users wishing to go directly to specific parts of the site and help those who do not use a pointing device, such as a mouse. A subset of the standard has been used and the access keys are defined as follows:

S - Skip navigation
1 - Home page
3 - Site map
4 - Search this site
5 - Frequently asked questions (FAQ)
6 - Help accessing our website
9 - Feedback about this website
0 - Access keys used on this website

How to use access keys
Access keys work slightly differently depending on which browser and type of computer you are using - this is a summary of the main different ways:
If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 on a PC, press 'alt' and the access key character at same time
If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 on a PC, press 'alt' and the access key character at the same time, then press the enter key
If you are using Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 on an Apple Macintosh, press 'control' and the access key character at the same time
This accessibility initiative is also supported by Netscape 6; use the 'alt' key on a PC, or the 'ctrl' key on an Apple Macintosh

Alternative text
All images on this site are accompanied by a brief alternative text which where appropriate identifies an image or its function. This alternative text (alt-text) is generally only visible when the browser's automatic image loading feature is turned off.

Links
All text links are written so that they make sense when read out of context.

PDFs
Adobe® Acrobat® Portable Document Format (PDF) files on this site added after December 2004 are tagged to allow basic accessibility; previous PDFs will be tagged as resources allow in 2005.
For more information about PDF accessibility see the Adobe website accessibility section.
For more help with Acrobat files generally and a link to download Acrobat Reader see the site help page.

Text size
The text on this website has been styled using a non-fixed value in a style sheet. This means that users can easily change the text size using their browser settings.