0800 555 815

Making the content accessible to all...

The Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service website has been built with the intention of making the content accessible to all our visitors, irrespective of their ability and mindful of an individuals needs. This has been achieved by adhering to best practices, such as compliance with W3C AAA (World Wide Web Consortium) standards.

We are still in the process of implementing additional functionality that will cater for the various needs of our target audience, but if you are experiencing any problems with our site or would like to suggest accessibility improvements - we would like to know - please contact us using our online form.

We have also redesigned the website using a User-centered design (UCD) approach, which is an approach to design that grounds the process in information about the people who will use the product. UCD processes focus on users through the planning, design and development of a website, we hope that you do in fact find the site user friendly. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you are struggling to find the information you are looking for.

Navigational Aids - Access Key's

Most browsers support jumping to specific links by typing keys defined on the web site. On Internet Explorer, you can press ALT + an access key + ENTER; on Macintosh, you can press Alt + an access key.

Firefox 1.0, please press ALT + an access key. Firefox 2.0 or higher, please press SHIFT + ALT + an access key.

All pages on this site define the following access keys:

• Access key h - Home page
• Access key f - Fire Authority
• Access key a - About Us
• Access key m - My Area
• Access key n - News
• Access key s - Fire Safety Advice
• Access key c - Community Work
• Access key w - Working For Us
• Access key u - Contact Us

Standards Compliance

Where possible this website endeavours to conform to level Treble-A of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.

All pages of this site are valid HTML 4.01 Transitional, using structured semantic markup. All CSS has been tested as valid CSS Level 2.1

Images

All images used within this site, have a text equivalent (ALT tag). The alternative text is displayed if the image cannot be loaded and is used by screen readers.

Plain English

This website has been written in plain English; where possible we have avoided the use of jargon and unnecessarily long sentences.

RSS Feeds from GMFRS

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds allow you to see when websites have added new content. You can get the latest headlines and video in one place, as soon as its published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from.
In essence, the feeds themselves are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people.

The first thing you need is something called a news reader. This is a piece of software that checks the feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications.

The RSS Icon. Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Hotmail.

If you click on the RSS button you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader. Most sites that offer feeds use a similar orange button, but some may just have a normal web link.

Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Safari, automatically check for feeds for you when you visit a website, and display an icon when they find one. This can make subscribing to feeds much easier. For more details on these, please check their websites.

Choose a Feed you would like to Subscribe to

Latest Incidents
incidents/gmfs_incidents_rss.aspx

Latest News and Press Releases
news/GMFS_News_RSS.aspx

Latest Blog updates
chiefs_blog/gmfs_CHIEFS_BLOG_RSS.aspx

Latest Events
events/GMFS_Events_RSS.aspx

RSS Feed Readers

Windows
 
Newz Crawler - http://www.newzcrawler.com/
FeedDemon - http://netnewswireapp.com/
Awasu - http://www.awasu.com/

Mac OS X

Newsfire - http://www.newsfirerss.com/
NetNewsWire - http://netnewswireapp.com/

Web

Bloglines - http://www.bloglines.com/
FeedZilla - http://www.feedzilla.com/
NewsGator - http://www.newsgator.com/
Microsoft Live - http://login.live.com
My Yahoo! - http://my.yahoo.com/?_bc=1