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Accessibility at HL


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Email us: Accessibility@hl.co.uk

Our accessibility commitment

We aim to make our products and services accessible. We follow guidelines laid down by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Our aim is to conform to Level AA against Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 (WCAG) standards. We'd like to go beyond this by including clients with disabilities.

We involve clients with accessibility needs in the development of our products and services, and are always looking for ways to improve what we offer.

If you would be interested in sharing your lived experience to help us improve our services, we are looking for participants to join our Accessibility Research Panel. You will be paid for any interviews and testing sessions.

Join our Accessibility Research Panel

Please email us at Accessibility@hl.co.uk or call us if you have any feedback or questions.

Website accessibility

We have integrated the following accessibility factors into our site:

  • Simple descriptive text to clearly define hyperlinks
  • Alternative descriptions for images and for links where appropriate
  • Strong contrast colour palettes to make it easier for visually impaired users, and for those using low-colour display devices
  • Minimal use of Flash or frames to avoid interference with screen readers

We test our site across all the browsers we support.

Customise your experience

You are most likely to get a more accessible experience by customising your device to suit your needs. Here is how to customise your experience.

Turning off the drop-down navigation menus (mega menus)

Mega menus are the menus that drop down when you hover your mouse over the top navigation bar of the website. They have been designed to help you quickly and easily get to the information you want. If you would prefer not to see these menus, you can turn them off using the controls below. This preference will be stored in a cookie on your device. See our cookie policy for more information. So long as you do not delete this cookie, your preference will be remembered each time you return to the site on this same device.

Mega menu preference

Mega menu customisations

Change text size

We've optimised our site for a 1024 x 768 screen resolution. If you are using a higher resolution screen, most browsers allow you to zoom in or out to increase the font size, size of images etc.

It differs from browser to browser, but most work like this:

PC: hold down the Control (CTRL) key and press '+' or '-' on your keyboard. If you have a mouse wheel, you can also hold the 'Ctrl' on your keyboard and roll the wheel forwards or backwards to zoom in and out.

Mac: hold down the Command (CMD) key and press '+' or '-'

There are alternative ways to do this, such as tabbing to the tool bar.

Change news article font size

Reading long news articles with a small font size can sometimes be difficult.

We have added an option to change the text size in our News section articles. It does not affect the font size of the rest of the site and resets when you leave that page.

You can find it in the top left corner of any news article you open.

Other ways to customise your experience

We use colours both to help structure and segment the page content, and to make the site look more attractive. However, colours and graphics can affect the enjoyment of the site for some people.

You can change the graphics colours and background colours, or switch graphics off completely, using the options in your browser.

Supported browsers and versions

If you’re concerned that you don’t have the most up to date browser and aren’t sure how to check, we’ve put a list of all the browsers and versions we support below.

  • Chrome 81 (available for Windows, iPhone/iPad, Apple macOS, Android™ and Linux)

    Get Chrome™

  • Firefox 68 (available for Windows, iPhone/iPad, Apple macOS, Android™ and Linux)

    Get Firefox

  • Microsoft Edge Chromium v103-112 (available for Windows, iPhone/iPad, Apple macOS, Android™)

    Get Microsoft Edge

  • Safari 14 (available for iPhone/iPad, Apple macOS)

    Get Safari

Let us know if you need support

If you have accessibility needs or you just want some extra support, there are lots of ways we can help. We'll work with you to make sure you get the support you need.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR NEEDS

Sharing your feedback

If you have any feedback about accessibility at HL, we want to hear from you.

Please email: Accessibility@hl.co.uk

Call us: 0117 980 9953

Issues with our website

If you experience problems with the website, our online support team may ask you to provide some of the technical details of your computer set up.

Select the button below to display these details and help with diagnosis:

Show technical details