It's important to us that this site is accessible to everyone. The site has been designed to meet the New Zealand Government web standards and accessibility best practice.
If you believe any of our content is not as accessible as it could be, or your requirements are not being met, please contact us.
Access Keys
You can use the Timaru District Council with the following access keys instead of a mouse.
- [ to skip to the main content on a page
- 0 the list of access keys (on this page)
- 1 Home
- 2 Site Map
- 3 Search
- 9 Contact Us
How to use access keys
On Windows:
- In Internet Explorer, press ALT + an access key, then press Enter.
- In Firefox, press SHIFT + ALT + an access key.
On a Macintosh:
- Press Ctrl + an access key.
Use of Text on the Site
You can increase the size of text on the screen using the instructions below.
- Internet Explorer: Select the 'View' menu, then 'Text Size', and then your chosen size (or if you have a mouse wheel simply hold down CTRL and roll the mouse wheel to alter the text size.)
- Firefox, Safari: Hold down CTRL and press + or - to alter the text size.
How to use the ReadSpeaker Listen function
ReadSpeaker allows the text on the website to be read out loud to you. It provides you assistance if you have trouble reading text online. By having the text read out loud to you, you can understand the information on the website more easily. This makes the content more accessible and the website more pleasant to visit. As a user you don't have to download anything.
How does it work?
Listen to the main content
You simply click the Listen button to listen to the webpage's content: 
An audio player appears (see image below) and ReadSpeaker starts reading the text of the webpage out loud. 
In the player you can:
- Pause/restart the reading
- Stop the reading
- Use the progress bar to navigate in the audio
- Adjust the volume
- Click the settings icon to adjust the behavior of the service
- Click the download icon to download the audio file
- Close the player
You can use tab/shift+tab to navigate inside the player and press enter to activate a certain button or link.
Listen to selected text
You can select a part of the text that you want to listen to and then press the pop-up Listen button that appears next to the mouse pointer. When you click the pop-up Listen button, an audio player appears (see the image below) and ReadSpeaker starts reading the text you have selected. 
Settings
In the settings menu, you can:
- Choose whether you want to have the text highlighted while read
- Choose whether you want the text highlighted on a word and sentence basis, sentence only, or word only
- Choose style and colors for the highlighting
- Choose whether you want the reading speed to be slow, medium, or fast
- Choose whether you want the page to scroll automatically to follow the highlighted text
- Choose whether you want the pop-up Listen button to be shown when text is selected
Please visit ReadSpeaker's website for more information about online text to speech.