A cookie is a small text marker stored on your computer that enables us to track the use of our website. We use cookies to sign in and register with our website, to remember your accessibility settings and ensure the website is as user friendly as possible. Most big websites do this too.
If you delete or disable our cookies you may not be able to register on our site and benefit from some of our online features.
You have the opportunity to set your computer to accept all cookies, to notify you when a cookie is issued, or not to receive cookies at any time. The way in which you do this depends upon the web browser which you use.
To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.
Find out how to manage cookies on popular browsers:
Our website uses cookies in several places - we've listed each of them below with more details about why we use them and how long they will last.
If you use our accessibility settings to change how our website looks, then we will set a cookie so your settings are remembered.
| Cookie name | Typical content | Expires |
|---|---|---|
| userColourscheme | Name of the colour scheme (e.g. 'soft1') | 1 hour |
| userFontsize | Font size chosen (e.g. 'larger') | 1 hour |
| userFontchoice | Font style chosen (e.g. 'comicsans') | 1 hour |
| userLetterspacing | Letter spacing chosen (e.g. 'wide') | 1 hour |
These cookies are set for customers who use the Browsealoud service, to read aloud and translate content on our site. The cookies enable the service to function by storing the user’s selections and preferences as they move around the site, including their settings for the tool, any language selection they might have made, the position of the toolbar, and their acceptance of the disclaimers.
This website uses Browsealoud, an accessibility and reading support add-on that helps you to read the content. To learn more about Browsealoud, visit www.texthelp.com
Browsealoud stores some data in the Local Storage in your browser, to enable the add-on to work correctly and remember your preferences. Examples of preferences include colour choices, translation language choices, or screen mask configuration. Look at the Browsealoud user settings panel to see all the different types of information.
Browsealoud also stores the toolbar state. This ensures that when you enable an icon, it will remain enabled when you return to the website, or navigate to another page.
Browsealoud does not transmit any of this information to Texthelp servers.
Browsealoud also continues to use anonymised Google Analytics to collect general usage statistics to help us improve Browsealoud in future releases. This usage is considered to be a Tracking Cookie under EU Cookie Law, and it is important that users are able to opt out of this.
IP Anonymisation is used to ensure that both Google and Texthelp cannot identify individual users. Browsealoud does not log any personally identifiable information in these Analytics.
| Name | Type | Expires | Contains | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TH_TOOLBAR_SETTINGS |
Persistent |
No expiration date. Cleared only through JavaScript, or clearing the Browser cache / Locally Stored Data |
JSON object |
Stores an object containing user specific settings for the Browsealoud toolbar such as dialog positions and button states. No personally identifiable data is stored. |
|
API_SETTINGS |
Persistent |
No expiration date. Cleared only through JavaScript, or clearing the Browser cache / Locally Stored Data |
JSON object |
Stores an object containing user specific API settings for the Browsealoud toolbar such as voice and language selection, user preferences set in the toolbar settings panel and selected styles for word highlighting. |
|
audioalert |
Persistent |
No expiration date. Cleared only through JavaScript, or clearing the Browser cache / Locally Stored Data |
JSON object |
Stores a value ‘audioalert = true’ after the first Browsealoud audio alert. |
| Name | Type | Expires | Contains | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
__utma |
Persistent |
2 years from set/update |
A series of unique ids following the pattern: [Domain Hash].[Random Unique ID].[Timestamp of first visit].[Timestamp of start of previous session].[Timestamp of start of current session].[Session counter] |
Used to distinguish users and sessions. The cookie is created when the javascript library executes and no existing __utma cookies exists. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
|
__utmt |
Persistent |
10 minutes |
Number value 1 |
Used to throttle request rate. |
|
__utmb |
Persistent |
30 mins from set/update |
timestamp of when the user visited the website |
Used to determine new sessions/visits. The cookie is created when the javascript library executes and no existing __utmb cookies exists. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
|
__utmc |
Session |
End of browser session |
timestamp of the exact moment in time when a visitor leaves a site |
Not used in ga.js. Set for interoperability with urchin.js. Historically, this cookie operated in conjunction with the__utmbcookie to determine whether the user was in a new session/visit. |
|
__utmz |
Persistent |
6 months from set/update |
information on search engines and the entered search terms, or where the IP address of the visitor is located |
Stores the traffic source or campaign that explains how the user reached your site. The cookie is created when the javascript library executes and is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
|
_ga |
Persistent |
2 years |
the unique ID for the browsing session |
Used to distinguish users. The ID is used only to identify the session for the statistics and is completely anonymous. |
|
_gat_UA-4669579-11 |
Persistent |
1 minute |
Number value 1 |
Used to throttle request rate. If Google Analytics is deployed via Google Tag Manager, this cookie will be named _dc_gtm_<property-id>. |
|
_gid |
Persistent |
24 hours |
a unique value for each page visited |
Used to distinguish users. |
To improve our service we collect anonymous web statistics using programmes called Google Analytics and SiteImprove. They store several cookies on users' computers or mobile devices to tell us how many people have visited each web page, how they got there, and where they navigated to from there.
| Name | Default expiration time | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| __utma | 2 years from set/update | Used to distinguish users and sessions. The cookie is created when the javascript library executes and no existing __utma cookies exists. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
| __utmt | 10 minutes | Used to throttle request rate. |
| __utmb | 30 mins from set/update | Used to determine new sessions/visits. The cookie is created when the javascript library executes and no existing __utmb cookies exists. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
| __utmc | End of browser session | Not used in ga.js. Set for interoperability with urchin.js. Historically, this cookie operated in conjunction with the __utmb cookie to determine whether the user was in a new session/visit. |
| __utmz | 6 months from set/update | Stores the traffic source or campaign that explains how the user reached your site. The cookie is created when the javascript library executes and is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
| __utmv | 2 years from set/update | Used to store visitor-level custom variable data. This cookie is created when a developer uses the _setCustomVar method with a visitor level custom variable. This cookie was also used for the deprecated _setVar method. The cookie is updated every time data is sent to Google Analytics. |
You can opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites.
| Name | Type | Expires | Contains | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
nmstat |
Persistent |
Expires after 1000 days |
Randomly generated ID |
This cookie is used to help record the visitor’s use of the website. It is used to collect statistics about site usage such as when the visitor last visited the site. This information is then used to improve the user experience on the website. This Siteimprove Analytics cookie contains a randomly generated ID used to recognize the browser when a visitor reads a page. The cookie contains no personal information and is used only for web analytics. |
|
siteimproveses |
Session | End of browser session | Randomly generated ID | This cookie is used purely to track the sequence of pages a visitor looks at during a visit to the site. This information can be used to reduce user journeys, and enable visitors to find relevant information quicker |
| _cfduid | Persistent | Expires after 30 days | Randomly generated ID | The "__cfduid" cookie is set by the CloudFlare service to identify trusted web traffic. It does not correspond to any user id in the web application, nor does the cookie store any personally identifiable information. See: What does the CloudFlare cfduid cookie do? |
| AWSELB | Session | End of browser session | Randomly generated ID | The AWSELB cookie ensures that all page views for the same visit (user session) are sent to the same endpoint. This enables us to determine the sequence of a user's page views needed for features like Behaviour Tracking and Funnels. |
Our site search uses Google Custom Search, which continuously monitors and indexes the content of the site. It is designed to work exactly like Google on the web.
Social sharing audio and video services are run by other companies, who may put cookies on your computer when you use them on our site or if you are already logged in to them.
Services that we may use and their use of cookies:
