Accessibility

Here at the Energy Ombudsman, we are committed to treating everybody with fairness and respect. We want our services to be accessible for everyone, so have worked hard in removing barriers that people may face. We understand everyone has unique circumstances and sometimes people need us to do things differently for them to ensure they can get the best service from us, which is why we believe it is important that we make our services easy to access.

We encourage you to share with us any details of your personal circumstances, or additional support needs, to enable us to support you during your case. By understanding our consumers better, we can flex what we do to their circumstances.

Energy Ombudsman is committed to making sure that people needing additional support aren’t disadvantaged in accessing our services. Our Reasonable Adjustments guide explains our approach.

We want you to know that any information you provide to us is treated with care and kept strictly confidential in line with our privacy policy.

If you need to contact us to request access to any of the services below, require support or need to report any accessibility issues, you can do this over the phone, online or in writing.

• Phone: 0330 440 1624 – one of our team will be on hand to support you
• Email: accessibility@energyombudsman.org for any accessibility requests or issues that you would like to report
• Postal address: Energy Ombudsman, Daresbury Park, 3300, Warrington WA4 4HS

• Audio or verbal communication only
• Written/email communication only
• Sign Language (see Hearing Impairment)
• Large print and Braille (see Visual Impairment)
• Written communication in foreign languages (see Translation Services)
• Audio communication via interpreter (see Translation Services)
• Request for an advocate or third party to help you with your complaint

• We can provide 1:1 support throughout your journey with us, including help with submitting the necessary forms if you are unable or unconfident
• Ongoing review of your circumstances
• Can make alterations to our standard processes and procedures
• We can allow additional time to respond to any requests/communication
• Calls at specific times of day
• We can refer/signpost you to a third-party agency for support that we are unable to provide

We work with TW Languages who provide translation services in over 200+ languages, helping to support you access us. For example this can include providing an interpreter, submitting a new complaint or translating any communication in Arabic, Ukrainian, Polish, Urdu, Spanish, Gujarati or Bengali. Please let us know which language you require by contacting us on the below details:

• Email: accessibility@energyombudsman.org
• Telephone: 0330 440 1624

We can communicate or provide documents in alternative formats such as large print, coloured paper, audio or braille.

We want you to know that you can contact us over the phone, to submit your supplier complaint and a member of the team will fill the details in on the system and submit this for you.

To help navigate around the website we have our accessibility plug in provided by AccessiBe which has functions to support people who are visually impaired, and it will also adjust the website to be compatible with screen readers you have already installed on your computer or smart phone.

If you need help in accessing our services and you have a visual impairment, please email us on the following: accessibility@energyombudsman.org.

If you have a hearing impairment and require support you can contact us using a sign language interpreter, through InterpretersLive, click here for more information.

• PDF User Guide
• Device Requirements
• InterpretersLive is available from 8am until midnight, seven days a week. Outside of these hours, we can provide pre-bookable video interpreting with 30 minutes notice. If you leave your contact details in a video message, we will contact you to rearrange the call.
• If an interpreter is not immediately available, you can hold or retry the call later.
• If you prefer not to use this service you can at any stage nominate a third party to speak on your behalf.

Video: User guide for InterpretersLive! Service

We understand that having an additional support need can affect the way people take in and understand information. We have carefully considered the design of our website and content with this in mind.

Our website meets all priority two requirements of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1). This used to be called Level AA compliance.

We’ve designed our website to be completely responsive so that is caters to the needs of consumers who may need a more accessible online experience.

We’ve thought about the following:

• People who can't see very well: The colours and the contrast between them; the size of text and the choice of fonts.
• People who are blind: How a screen reader interprets the content on our pages.
• People who can't hear very well: How any audio content is represented visually.
• People who find a keyboard or mouse hard to use: The ease with which someone can find their way to parts of the page.
• People who find words difficult: The length of sentences and paragraphs and the words we use. The fonts and size of text. The chance to have text read out loud.

To help access our website fully we have our accessibility plug in provided by AccessiBe which has functions to support everyone regardless of ability. This helps you to in doing the following:

• Clear any flashed & reduce colour which helps reduce seizures
• Enhance websites visuals to support those visually impaired
• Neuro diverse friendly profile
• Optimize website for screen readers already installed on your computer or smart phone
• Change colours, contrast & text size
• Can switch off any animations
• Reading tools