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Accessibility Guide

This page contains information about the options available to maximise the accessibility of this website. It sets out the features we have used to ensure the site is as accessible as possible to people with impairments and the technology they use.

This information is available from every page on the Newcastle Borough Council web site.

Click here to view accessibility options for this website

Use this link to view the websites accessibility awards and approval marks

Using the Site

The site can be navigated in the following ways:

• Using the content navigation menu to link to the main content sections on the site, such as A-Z Council Services, Advice, Benefits and Emergencies, Council and Democracy, and Leisure and Culture.

• Using the global site navigation at the beginning, and repeated at the end, of every page with the following links:

• Accessibility– links to this page

• Home- links to the Newcastle Borough Council website homepage

• Contact Us- links to contact information for Newcastle Borough Council

• Help– links to information on how to get the most out of this website and ways in which this site can help you find the information and facilities you need.

• Online Services– links to the index page of online services available on the website.

• Site Map- links to the page containing an overview of the website contents

Accessibility Features

The design of our website includes a number of accessibility features including:

• advice on browser accessibility options
• facilities to automatically change the colour scheme for this site
• facilities to automatically change the font sizes for this site
• a common design throughout rather than providing text only pages for disabled users, and allowing text sizes and colours to be changed to suit the users needs.
• ensuring that all images used in our site are given appropriate alternative text descriptions ("ALT texts"), as required by internationally-recognised Web accessibility guidelines. All graphical navigation buttons are similarly ALT-tagged.
• we avoid the use of frames throughout the website.
• 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.
• to view and print PDF files, you must have Adobe® Acrobat® Reader installed
• the site also publishes documents in Microsoft Word format.
• to view and print Microsoft Word files, you must either have Word installed on your PC or you can download Microsoft Word Viewer software
• in general, we try to avoid the use of other proprietary publishing formats such as Macromedia Flash and other media formats requiring third-party plug-ins., We use other technologies, such as Javascript, appropriately to avoid creating accessibility barriers. We focus on the use of "open" publishing standards, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium.

Accessible PDFs

Newcastle Borough Council uses Adobe Acrobat software to create PDF (Portable Document Format) files.

PDF files can be used by a range of computer systems and are designed with the Internet in mind to make it easier to distribute large, complex documents. You will need the appropriate version of Adobe Acrobat Reader to view, navigate, and print PDF files. Adobe Acrobat Reader is freely available for all major computing platforms.

You can download a copy from the Abode web site.

PDF documents may not be readily accessible to screen readers and may not be formatted for visually impaired users. However, the following tools can be used to convert PDF documents into plain text or plain HTML documents. You can translate a PDF into a text only or plain HTML by using a script or sending a file as an attachment.

Adobe Conversion Script

Go to the following link, type in the URL of any PDF and the document will be converted into a text only HTML document.

Conversion:
Adobe Acrobat online tools

E-mail
For converting offline documents, you can send your PDF as an e-mail attachment, a converted version of the document will be posted back to you.
HTML version pdf2html@sun.trace.wisc.edu
TEXT version: pdf2txt@adobe.com

An acrobat access plugin is also available from : http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/5efe.htm

Further Information on Accessible PDFs: http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/access_onlinetools.html

This service is provided by Adobe

Contact information

We are constantly working to improve the accessibility features of the Newcastle Borough Council’s website, and welcome your suggestions and comments.

If you encounter any accessibility or technical problems when using this site, please contact the Communications Team: email webmaster@newcastle-staffs.gov.uk.

Accessibility Awards and Approval Marks

Newcastle-under-Lyme is proud to have achieved various awards and approval marks.