Welcome to the "Help" section of our site.

This section aims to help make your visit to the Barchester Healthcare website as easy and informative as possible. We have designed our site to be as user-friendly and as easy to read as possible. However, if you have any problems using our site, please contact our Webmaster (our contact details are at the end of this section).

Navigation and site design

Barchester Healthcare website is mainly controlled by the links on the left hand side. With Further navigation on the upper right.

Some pages have further requested pop-ups.

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Searching

Search facility for your nearest Barchester home with services and the results also give travel distances in miles.
Click here to try.

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Accessibility

We are committed to making our website as accessible as possible to users with disabilities, including those who may be partially sighted.

How to increase the size of text.

If you find the text on our website is difficult to read, you may want to make it bigger. To increase text size you need to change a setting on your Internet browser.

Using Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5 click: View > Text Size > ... You can then choose how large you would like the text to be.

Using Netscape Navigator 4 or above, click View and then choose to 'Increase Font' or 'Decrease Font'.

The action is similar for all browsers on the market. Consult your browser's online 'Help' for further information.

How to change the colours on the site.

You may also find it helpful to change the colour scheme

1. Click Tools at the top of your browser. A drop-down menu will appear.
2. Select Internet Options... from the menu. Another box will appear.
3. Click on the button marked Accessibility... in the bottom right of the box. A new box will appear.
4. Click in the square next to Ignore colours specified on Web pages.
5. When a tick appears in the box click OK to close the box.
6. In the Internet Options box (which should still be open; if not, open it again from the Tools menu) click the Colours.. button'. Another box will open.
7. Uncheck the box marked Use Windows colours.
8. Now click the rectangle to the right of Text and choose a text colour (e.g. yellow).
9. Then click the rectangle to the right of Background and choose a background colour (e.g. black).
10. Click OK to confirm your changes, and OK to close the Internet Options box.

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About Adobe and PDF files

Some files on this website are available in PDF format which stands for Portable Document Format. PDF files allow you see a document in its original format with the original layout and design. To download PDF files you need to have a copy of Acrobat Reader on your computer, available free of charge at Adobe. To download Acrobat Reader click the following link which will open in a new window http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.

Accessing PDF files

Some of the files on our site are in PDF format and are indicated by . If you have a visual impairment and use a screen reader, use Access Adobe available here: click the following link which will open in a new window http://access.adobe.com/. See also "About Adobe and PDF files" above.

Unable to view PDF Files

To view a PDF file a user must have Abobe's acrobat reader installed. Adobe acrobat reader is a free download available at http://www.adobe.com/

When clicking on a link to a PDF document a user's computer may appear to not respond. The computer has to wait until the PDF document has downloaded before being able to display the document. If the user's connection to the internet is relatively slow and the PDF document is relatively large then this can take several minutes.

If you are experiencing trouble viewing a PDF document try right clicking on the link to the PDF and select "save as" this should then prompt you to select a locate for downloading the file. This method will show a progress bar during the download and estimate how long it will take to download the file. In addition you will have a local copy of the file which can be viewed at leisure while the computer is offline.
Further information can be found in the section above: "About Adobe and PDF files"

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Browser compatibility

The Barchester Healthcare website has been fully tested against the most popular web browsers on the majority of PC operating systems and should work on any computer running a mainstream browser from version 3 and above. For best results however, we recommend that you use either Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or Netscape Communicator 4.2 or above.

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Scripting languages

In order to make the site compatible with the majority of web browsers the use of scripting languages has been kept to a minimum. If your browser is JavaScript 1.1 compatible then you will benefit from easier means to navigate directly to content subsections via the links in the left-hand frame. However if your browser is not compliant then you can still access all parts of the site via the image or page links.

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Downloads

The Barchester Healthcare website contains a number of files and forms, which can be downloaded, usually in Microsoft WORD or Adobe PDF format. To view these files you will need the appropriate software on your computer. Some of the files are quite large in size and therefore may take a few minutes to download depending on the speed of your Internet connection. To achieve reasonable download speeds we recommend that you connect to the Internet via a 33.6kbs modem or faster.

Unable to View Word Documents

To view a Word document you will need a copy of Word 95 or later installed on your computer.

You may experience a delay when trying to see a Word document. The computer has to download a copy of the word document which can take a long time depending on your connection to the internet.

It is advisable to try right clicking on the link to the word document and selecting "save target as" you will then be asked to save the file to a location on your computer. This method will allow you see the progress of the download and it will display an estimate of how long the download is likely to take.

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Bugs

Images are upside down ?

This is a very rare condition and is mainly due to a faulty Macromedia Flash® plug-in with Microsoft Internet Explorer® pre 2001 build 5.
To correct click here after just refresh the page to view correctly.

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Contact:

Barchester Healthcare Ltd
Suite 201, The Chambers
Chelsea Harbour
London
SW10 0XF

Or use our on-line form, click here.

If you have any technical problems or queries using our site please contact.
CyberView Ltd