The Planning Inspectorate- Wales

Site Help

Introduction
About the Site
Site Accessibility
Using the Site

Introduction

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. This page is available from every page on the Planning Inspectorate web site. We have also provided information on how to change settings in your browser to make the site easier to read if you are having difficulties.

About the Site

The Planning Inspectorate web site contains information, guidance advice and statistics from the Planning Inspectorate. The site will be continually developed to include all current information regarding planning appeals, Inspectorate services and jobs in the Inspectorate. It signposts other relevant websites and information sources. For further helpful information please see Frequently Asked Questions page.

Work on making this site more accessible has been influenced by the Guidelines for UK Government Websites, which incorporate support for the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Where possible, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to separate visual formatting from structural markup. All pages created to our more recent design standards should render in some usable form on a wide range of browsers and, if necessary, should be viewable in a very basic form on browsers which do not recognise CSS or where CSS has been switched off.

Site accessibility

UK Government Accesskey Standard

The following table shows keyboard shortcut commands available within the updated areas of this site. These commands are designed to help users with difficulty in using pointing devices such as a mouse. Depending on your browser type use one of the following.

Microsoft IE4 on Windows PCs - press 'alt' and letter at the same time.
Microsoft IE5 on Windows PCs - press 'alt' and letter then press enter.
Microsoft IE5 on Mac - hold down 'control' key and then press letter
This WAI initiative is now supported by Netscape 6.

Key	Navigational Page
1	Home Page
2	What's New Page
3	A - Z
5	Frequently Asked Questions
6	Help Page
7	Complaints Procedure
8	Privacy Statement
9	Feedback Page
C	Welsh Language Site
E	English Language Site

PDF

Some of the documents in this site are available in Adobe Acrobat's Portable Document Format (PDF).

To view these documents you need to use a PDF file viewer such as Acrobat Reader or Acrobat Exchange from Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Whilst you will be able to view the form on screen and print it out, you will not be able to save the completed form to your computer to review or amend later. You can download the Acrobat Reader for free.

Should you wish to Save PDF files for other use you may decide to consider purchasing at your own expense the full Acrobat product.

Note - For visually impaired users

Access.Adobe.Com is a tool that allows blind and visually impaired users to read any document in Adobe PDF format. The tool converts PDF documents into simple HTML or ASCII text which can then be read by a number of common screen reading programs that synthesize the HTML as audible speech.

Screen Sizes

The site is compatible with access technology, which reads the content of the site and relays it in audio format. It is also designed to display on all monitor resolutions, including 600 x 400 pixels and uses web-safe colours. The size of the font can be adjusted using your browser.

Recommendations

The Planning Inspectorate web site has been recommended as a model of good practice in accessible design by the Royal National Institute for the Blind (RNIB).

The Planning Inspectorate website has achieved Level A compliance as defined by W3C:

This website has been rated with the Internet Content Rating Association.

Using the Site

Main Site navigation

The site can be navigated in several ways:

Using the main navigation menu to obtain main facilities on the site such as the search or this help screen
Using main heading links on pages, each of which will be followed by a short text description of the information to be found by selecting the link
Using the text links at the bottom of each page to navigate to main sections and the front-pages of the Planning Inspectorate and the Open Government web site
Using the side menu bar which is available from the home page and certain other pages to allow users to navigate to main sections or specific topics of interest

The following examples show some of the different sorts of navigation available.

Top Main Navigation Bar

The navigation bar on the Planning Inspectorate front page is the same as all other pages. This allows users to quickly navigate to key areas of the site. The menu bar for all other pages appears on the screen as follows:

The options in the menu bar provide the following links:

Cymraeg links to the Welsh language version of the site

Contacting Us links to a contact page and a feedback form

Site Help links to this screen

Home links to the Planning Inspectorate home page

Search allows users to type in a keyword or phrase for which they wish to find information. This search currently searches the entire Planning Inspectorate site.

Main heading Links

Main heading links are in large green fonts and underlined when rolled over. Main heading links are always followed by some explanatory text about the subject available by selecting the link.

Bottom Page Links

Text links at the bottom of the page provide links back to the home page, to the Open Government web site, copyright information relating to all information on the Planning Inspectorate web site and to a feedback form specifically for the web site. Comments made on the web site are posted directly to the Web Manager.

Side menu

Some pages have side menu options which link to subject areas, for example the What's New section and quick reference listings of Planning Inspectorate publications and forms.

If you are on a page that does not have these links and you wish to see them select the Home button on the top navigation bar.