Accessibility
Northern Rock recognises the importance of providing access to services that are accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of technology or ability.
Whilst Northern Rock strives to adhere to the accepted guidelines and standards for accessibility and usability, it is not always possible to do so in all areas of the website. Within the secure areas of the site (areas that require users to login or register) we have provided a higher level of security to protect your personal information. Thus, some users might experience some difficulties accessing this part of our site. We are aware of this and are constantly seeking out solutions to bring all areas of the site up to the same level of overall accessibility.
We are committed to increasing the accessibility and usability of our website and are actively working towards complying with Level AA of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. However, we acknowledge that for a variety of reasons some parts of our website, including secure areas, may be difficult to access.
The following information explains how to make services and content on our website more accessible:
Accessibility features of our site
The majority of the pages on our site are set up so that you can change the colours, font style and size of text on the page to suit your visual needs.
How you do it depends on the system and web browser you're using. This is how to change the text size in the most commonly used browsers:
Change text size via browser toolbar
- In Internet Explorer 7, go to "Page" in the top bar, select "Text size" or "Text zoom" and choose the size you need.
- If you're using Netscape, Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer 4, 5 and 6, go to "View" in the top bar, select "Text Zoom" or "Text size" and choose the size you need.
- In Safari go to "View" in the top bar of the browser, then choose "Make text bigger" or "Make text smaller" in the dropdown menu.
Using your own style sheets
You can apply your own style sheet onto this website by:
- Internet Explorer: Select Tools, then Internet Options, then Accessibility. Next click on any or all 3 checkboxes to ignore colours, font styles or font sizes. In the same window you can change your style sheet by clicking the checkbox that says, 'format document using my style sheet' then browse to your style sheet and click OK.
- In Netscape: Select Edit, then Preferences and then Appearance. You will be given the choice to specify your own colours and fonts.
If you're using another browser not mentioned above, please check its "Help" facility to find out how to carry out similar actions.
Using Portable Document Files ("PDFs")
Sometimes you'll find items on the website that are provided in a "PDF" format. You'll need to have Adobe Reader ® - Version 5 or above on your computer to read these documents. If you do not have Adobe Reader on your computer, you can get it free from the Adobe website at: www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html
To read PDF documents with a screen reader you can link to the Access Adobe website which provides useful tools and resources. Adobe also has a free online conversion tool for PDF documents.
Northern Rock Disability Awareness Team Contact details
Northern Rock Disability Awareness Team contact details
Telephone: (01) 602 0324*
E-mail: disability.awareness@northernrock.co.uk
Fax: (01) 602 0325
Postal address:
Block 8
Harcourt Centre
Need to talk?
Call us on (01) 602 0324*
Mon-Fri 9am-5pm, excluding bank and public holidays.
Calls are charged at your service provider's prevailing rate and may be monitored and recorded.