Accessibility

Please tell us if you are impacted by an impairment, disability or health condition which affects your ability to correspond with us. There may be ways we can help, such as by providing you with the same or similar material, in an alternative format.

Some of the alternative formats we offer include:

• Braille
• Large print
• Audio formats

To get in touch, please call us, write to us or send us a secure message through our online Self-Serve system.

We understand that if you don’t use English regularly, it may not be easy for you to communicate with us.

Here are some ideas that may be helpful for you if you need to call us or if we send information to you about your account.

When you call us

When you call us, you may find it helps to have a trusted family member or friend with you to interpret or translate. When you call, you must confirm who you are, but you can tell us you are happy for the family member or friend to talk to us on your behalf.

You can also set up a third party authority allowing the family member or friend to call us without you being present.

You can find more information about setting up a third-party authority on the Making a change page of our website.

Problems understanding written English

Please tell us if we send you a letter or text message you don’t understand. We don’t offer a written translation service. However, if you need it, we can give you more time to review the information we’ve sent to you.

You can find all our contact details and opening hours here.  

We understand that if you struggle with hearing loss or a speech impairment it may not be easy for you to contact us.

You may wish to consider using the Relay UK service. Relay UK is a free 24-hour service that enables people with hearing loss and speech impairment to communicate in English over the phone.

You don’t need any special kit, just download the free Relay UK app and link it to your phone number. You can use the service on a compatible smartphone, tablet or PC and will need an internet connection.  You can also still use a traditional textphone.

To use Relay UK on your device, dial 18001 and then dial the number that you’d like to call and there is no extra cost.

A Relay Assistant will convey messages to people on standard phones. It’s like a 3-way call between you, a hearing Relay Assistant, and our telephone agent.

Relay assistants are bound by confidentiality and are acting on your behalf, so it’s safe to answer security questions when using use the service.

You can find out more information at Relay UK including How-to videos and step by step guides.

Our website has been built with our customers in mind and includes various features to make it accessible to all audiences. 

Wherever possible, our website is built to follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at the AA level. This means the design and content of our site should be user friendly and accessible for customers with accessibility needs.  

To help customers using assistive technologies view our web pages and navigate around easily, we’ve integrated HTML heading elements (markers) into each page to clearly represent the page structure.  

To support customers who may struggle with certain colour combinations, we’ve checked text and background colours to ensure that the contrast is suitable. We’ve also ensured that information is not referenced by colour alone. 

Customers using a screen reader can use the ‘Skip to content’ button for easy access to website content. 

The general text size used on our site can be increased at any time by clicking the AAA button in the top bar of our website.  

A wide range of other changes to support accessibility needs can be made within the settings menu on most web browsers.