Accessibility

We are committed to making our website easy to use and accessible to everyone. As such our aim is to conform to the Worldwide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility guidelines 1.0 , to level 'AA' standard.

Compliance with this standard is an ongoing process and we are fully committed to offering a user friendly experience. If you experience any problems accessing content on our website, please e-mail webmaster@ipo.gov.uk and our web team will endeavour to address the problem or provide information in an alternative format.

Navigating the website using the keyboard

There is an ongoing debate on whether access keys (keyboard shortcuts) help or hinder users in navigating websites. Until best practice on use of access keys has been agreed, we have chosen not to implement them on our website.

However, it is still possible to navigate our website using your keyboard. This can be done using the following keys:

• Up and down arrow keys to scroll up or down a page;
• Tab key to move between links;
• Return or Enter key to select a link;
• Backspace key to go back to the previous page.

PDF accessibility

Our website contains a large number of PDF documents. Modern versions of PDF software, such as Adobe, have a number of features which improve the accessibility of PDF files. However, if you continue to have trouble reading them, a free online tool for converting PDF documents to HTML or text is available from Adobe.

To use the tool you will need to know the URL (page address) of the document you want to convert. This can be found in the browser address bar at the top of the screen.