Accessibility for people with disabilities
We regularly test pages against specific devices and with users who use assistive technology like screen readers. Further information about customising your browser, changing its settings and keyboard short cuts can be found in our accessibility section.
Large files
Some of the files on the HSE are big and take a long time to download. These are usually video, audio or PDF files.
Large files have their file sizes quoted like this [24MB] to help you gauge how long it will take to download. You may want to consider the likely download times before choosing to download these files.
Slow download speeds can also be caused by poor telephone connections, heavy internet traffic or internet server overload.
What is MP3?
MP3 is a digital audio format, which allows audio files to be easily made available for download, the compression rate allows for high quality audio at a small file size.
For more detailed information visit the Wikipedia article about the MP3 audio format .
How to play MP3 files
MP3 can be played on your computer using many freely available software packages, if you are a Windows user, Windows Media Player comes standard on your installation, there is also RealPlayer and WinAmp, all of which are free to use and available from their respective website's downloads area. If you are a Mac user, iTunes is standard on your OSX installation and can be accessed via the Dock, if you are using OS9 Quicktime is your default media player, or all Windows Media Player for Mac.
Saving the files to listen offline or on a portable device
Windows users: Right-click the download link, and for Internet Explorer, choose Save Target As (Save Link As in Firefox) from the menu, then choose a location on your computer for the file to be saved to, make it somewhere memorable like My Documents or the Desktop.
Mac users: Ctrl-click the download link, and for Safari, choose Save Linked File from the menu, and Safari will save the file to your Desktop. If you are using Internet Explorer for Mac or Firefox, ctrl-click the download link, choose Save Target As (or Save Link As in Firefox) and then choose a download location, the default will be your Desktop.
PDF files
To view PDF files you will need to download the Acrobat Reader.
Adobe Acrobat Reader is the most popular PDF viewer but there are several others available. Try the following sites for more information:
CSV files
CSV (Comma-Separated-Value) is a common file type used to import data from one software application to another, with commas separating the values in each field.
How to view CSV files
This file format allows for data to be easily retrieved into a variety of applications, they are best viewed within one that will allow the easy manipulation of data that is in displayed in columns. Common examples of such applications are those that are used to create spreadsheets, such as Microsoft Excel or Open Office Calc
Open the CSV file in Excel
- Open Microsoft Excel and click on the 'Open' icon or go to 'File > Open...'.
- In the window that pops open, click on the drop-down menu labelled 'Files of type:' and select 'Text Files'.
- Navigate to your csv file, select your file and click 'Open'.
If you don't have access a suitable application, you can also view the data in either an ASCII text-editor or a word-processor. However, since neither of these two application types has the facility to easily format the width of the data columns, quite a bit of manual reformatting may be required to view properly.
You may be able to view the file in your browser, or you may want to download the file by 'right-clicking' on the link and save the file to your computer
Some common CSV problems
Some people may find that when they view the CSV file some information may not be correctly displayed.
You may for example, see rows of “hash“ symbols, ie “#######“ instead of numbers or letters, this is because the current column is too narrow, try double clicking the column header.
You may also see some information displayed in “scientific notation“ ie “1.23 x 109“ instead of “1230000000“, this is remedied by setting the column format to “number” rather than “general“ or “scientific“.