We want everyone to be able to use our service with confidence.

Many people who contact us are already dealing with stress, uncertainty, or practical barriers.

So, our job is simple. We want to remove the obstacles we can, explain things clearly, and make sure you’re not put at a disadvantage because of your disability.

Before we explain how to ask for extra help, we want you to know about the things we already do to make our website as accessible as we can for everyone.

How our website can help you

• Our website meets the latest accessibility requirements and is designed to work well for anyone using assistive technologies to browse the internet, like screen readers.
• We offer free extra accessibility options to change the way you can use our website. Click the accessibility button at the top of every webpage to open the ‘Recite Me’ toolbar. This opens lots of options like text to speech, adjusting colours and fonts, masking parts of the screen and translating pages into many other languages.
• If you would like to ask questions about whether we can help you, and the sorts of complaints we can look at, our virtual assistant is a good place to start. You can ask us direct questions and get quick automatic answers by clicking the ‘need help’ button in the bottom right corner.
• We prefer for you to submit a complaint through our online complaint form. We have designed this to be simple and easy to use, and to guide you through providing everything we need to look into your complaint. We understand you may have lots to tell us and putting your complaint into words could feel difficult. But if you can already use our website independently, we think you should feel confident in submitting your complaint using our online form. Once you have submitted a complaint this way, you can also send us messages in a similar way to email if you prefer written communication.

We have other resources to support people who need extra help, like an explainer video in British Sign Language. See our Accessibility pages for more information.

Asking for extra help - our legal responsibilities

The Equality Act 2010 means organisations like ours must make “reasonable adjustments” for Disabled people. Because of the things we investigate, we know many of our customers do have disabilities.

The law also says we must think ahead. We can’t just wait until someone tells us they are struggling. So we plan for a wide range of needs from the start.

This includes people who are visually impaired, Deaf or hard of hearing, have mobility difficulties, learning disabilities, neurodiverse conditions, or long-term health issues.

And even if you don’t meet the Act’s definition, we will still do our best to support you.

What adjustments can look like

A reasonable adjustment is anything that we decide makes it easier for you to use our service fairly because of problems associated with a disability.

What helps one person may not help another, so we’ll talk with you about what you need.

Examples include:

• Clearer or larger print
• Different colour contrast to support reading
• More time to respond
• Talking by phone instead of writing
• Information in Braille
• A representative or advocate speaking on your behalf
• A single point of contact so you don’t have to repeat yourself
• Easy Read or Reader Friendly versions of key documents
• A British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter

How to ask for an adjustment

We will ask you early on if there is anything that would help you use our service more easily.

But you can ask for an adjustment at any point. You don’t need to wait to be asked.

If we spot something that might support you better, we’ll suggest it too.

How we decide what is reasonable

When you request an adjustment, we look at:

• What substantial disadvantage you would face without it because of a disability
• Whether the adjustment would actually fix or reduce that disadvantage
• How practical it is for us to make
• Whether it would significantly disrupt our other work
• The cost and the resources needed

We aim to agree quickly the adjustments we will make.

If we can’t make a particular adjustment, we will explain why and talk you through possible alternatives

When we agree to make an adjustment, we’ll confirm it in writing (or the way we’ve agreed to communicate with you) so you know exactly what to expect.

Every person and every request is different. We will never make assumptions about what you need.

If you’re unhappy with our decision to make an adjustment

We want you to feel supported throughout your complaint journey.

If you’re not happy with how we responded to your request for an adjustment, or with the adjustment we provided, you can complain to us about this.

You can read more in our service complaints policy.

Last updated: June 2026