As a charity, we believe in free and open access (opens in new tab) to family history records and that providing this is the best way to preserve these rich sources of information for future generations. Therefore, it is crucial to Free UK Genealogy’s mission that everyone has the means to access all of our websites. People might struggle to access our services due to advancing age, long-term health issues, and/or disability, which can often make access difficult or impossible.

Work with the Shaw Trust

To make this website accessible without customisations, we are currently working with The Shaw Trust (opens in new tab) to make FreeREG easily accessible to all, and more compatible with assistive technology. It is being evaluated against and brought into line with the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 (opens in new tab). In the next few months, the site should become usable by recent versions of assistive technologies including JAWS (Job Access With Speech), NVDA (Non-Visual Desktop Access), ZoomText, and Dragon Naturally Speaking. It should also become usable by screen magnifiers and speech recognition software found on your operating system.

In the meantime …

Find the right assistive technology to customise FreeREG to your needs

We want everyone to be able to use this site ‘as is’, but you might find it more accessible if you customise your computer to match your individual needs. For example, you might want to change the font size, or colours, or have the computer read the text to you.

If the text is too small for you to read comfortably, then you can use Ctrl together with + (plus) to enlarge the page (Cmd with + on a Mac). See your browser’s View menu for other commands for changing the text or page size. You might be able to adjust the brightness and contrast settings for your screen or monitor.

We suggest you visit Ability Net (opens in new tab) where there is much more information on customisations.