Huntingdonshire district council

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Accessibility


Web Browsers

We try to ensure that our site is accessible, however if you are experiencing problems and using an old browser, you may wish to upgrade. To download the latest version of Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla browsers please see the sites on the right. For maximum compatibility with our current website we suggest you use Microsoft Internet Explorer. 

Adobe Acrobat Reader

In order to view some of the documents on the site you will require Adobe Acrobat Reader. The Adobe site gives instructions on how to install the viewer. 

The most recent version - Adobe Acrobat Reader includes support for screen readers (Accessibility) via the Microsoft Active Access API (MSAA). Click the link on the right to download the latest version of Acrobat Reader.

Access version of Adobe Acrobat - enables vision impaired users to read Adobe PDF documents.

Click on the Accessibility tools link on the right to access these tools.

You will now be able to open up PDF files in your Internet browser.   To print the documents click on the print button. To download and save files without viewing simply right-click the mouse cursor on the relevant link and then click 'Save Target As'.

Converting PDF documents to text

You can also convert Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) documents on-line into either HTML or ASCII text, which can then be read by a number of common screen reader programs.

Web-based forms submission tool - users can type the URL (or web address) of the PDF into an electronic form and select the "Get This PDF Document as HTML" button. The document will be converted on-the-fly to HTML and will be returned immediately to the Web browser. Click the Acrobat Accessibility tools link to convert your PDF via the web.

Language and Audio conversion

Huntingdonshire District Council will try to provide key documents in other formats such as large text, Braille, audio or in other languages. Please contact us using the link on the right and we will try to accommodate your needs.

Alternatively, Google provide a basic online translation service which you can access using the link on the right. This is a basic service and cannot be relied upon to give an accurate translation.

Access Keys

Our site uses the following web access keys:

  • S - Skip to content
  • 1 - Homepage
  • 3 - Sitemap
  • 5 – Frequently Asked Questions
  • 7 - Complaints
  • 8 - Content Disclaimer
  • 9 - Contact Us
  • 0 - Accessibility

Readspeaker

Huntingdonshire District Council has made a significant improvement in the accessibility of its website through speech enabling for the benefit of people with dyslexia, low literacy levels, learning disabilities, English as a second language or people with limited vision. In the UK it is estimated that 6 million people alone suffer from some form of dyslexia.
ReadSpeaker, which dynamically reads web content out loud, can be accessed by anyone browsing the council’s site, through a simple click on the ‘Listen to page’ button.  The service is hosted by ReadSpeaker for Huntingdonshire and there is no requirement on the web visitor to have any pre-installed software. 

Readability

  • We are always trying to improve the information on our website, both in terms of quality and quantity of information.
  • We have 81 staff adding content to our site. All have been trained to use our content management system. This allows a trained member of staff to log in to the website and post content relevant to their service on to the site. This allows us to add information on to the site much quicker than in the past, when a central team was responsible for creating and adding content onto the site. There is no longer a bottleneck stopping the information being added.
  • All of our users are trained to use the system; guidelines based on the Worldwide Web Consortium Web Accessibility Standards have been created to make sure the information added is of a consistent and
    genuine quality.
  • We include a specific ‘Writing for the web’ element to our training to encourage staff, not to just reproduce leaflets, but to write specifically for the web.
  • We require all of our Authors to have attended a Plain English course and to have signed up to our Web Authoring Policy.