Accessibility Guide

This page contains information on facilities available from the site including methods of navigation and links to sites giving accessibility advice and information on browsing the site with screen reader equipment, plus details about accesskeys and advice on browser accessibility options e.g. making text larger.

This page is available from every page on the Wrexham Council web site.

Listen to our website

Accessible Guide to Wrexham Town Centre

About the Site

The Wrexham County Borough Council Website provides a comprehensive source of information about the Council and it's services, and serves to promote Wrexham as an innovative and interesting area to live, visit and invest in.

Whilst the website has been designed to be as accessible to as many users as possible, the pages have been optimised to be best viewed with your screen resolution set to 800x600 pixels and using browsers versions 4 or above (Internet Explorer & Netscape Navigator). To get the best from the colour images contained on these pages we recommend you view with a colour depth greater than 256 colours.

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 the Council or Leisure and Tourism

• Using the global site navigation at the beginning, and repeated at the end, of every page:
  
  Home: links to the Wrexham Council website Homepage

  Site Contents: links to the Site Contents page containing an overview of the website structure and links to content areas

  Access Guide: links to this screen

  Contact Us: links to a feedback form and contact page

  A-Z Index provides contact details in alphabetical order for the Council Services you are interested in.

• Some pages also have an extra content menu, to allow users to navigate to main sections or specific topics of interest within the subject area currently being viewed

• You can also access the website using one of our shorter web addresses e.g. www.wrexham.gov.uk/councillor.

Accessibility Advice

Wrexham Council is committed to making its web site as accessible as possible to users with disabilities, including users who may be blind or partially sighted. We also make sure that those users who have reading difficulties are able to use the site.

Wrexham County Borough Council was the first local authority website in the United Kingdom to be awarded the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB)'s 'See It Right' Accessible Website logo.

The logo is given by the RNIB to websites which RNIB have formally assessed and which provide a high standard of accessibility.

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

• accesskeys

• advice on browser accessibility options

• 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 relevant 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.
  
• to aid users of text-only and audio browsers we have included a hidden accessibility feature, which enables the user to "skip over" the main page navigation buttons (rather then having to tab through them manually at the start of every page). Thus, the user can jump immediately down to the main content of the page.
  
• we strictly avoid the use of frames throughout the main council Web site.
  
• 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: click the link below to download the software

 Link to download Adobe Acrobat Reader

• 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

   Link to download the free Microsoft Word Viewer software

• in general, we try to avoid the use of other proprietary publishing formats such as Shockwave 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 and we will be working towards meeting as many requirements from WCAG 2.0 guidelines once they have been finalised.
  
  Some occasional exceptions to this are made - for example the Travel & Tourism Department have a Virtual Tour of Wrexham which requires a IPIX plug-in for your browser.
  
  Download the IPIX plug-in
  
  We have provided an accessible version of this tour using suitable alternative text descriptions for the images of Wrexham.
  

We are working to improve the accessibility features of www.wrexham.gov.uk, and welcome your suggestions and comments.

If you encounter any accessibility or technical problems when using this site, please e-mail the Web Development team: webmaster@wrexham.gov.uk or complete the online feedback form.