Website accessibility statement

About accessibility and the measures we've taken
Help with seeing our website
Help with navigating our website
Help with accessing PDFs on our website
Help with finding out more
Contact us

About accessibility and the measures we've taken

Web accessibility is the practice of making website content available to all users, particularly those with disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities. It includes making a website as accessible as possible regardless of browsing technology, such as for people with text-only web browsers and old browser versions

DIUS is committed to making its website accessible to as many people as possible. To this end we are endeavouring to meet all AA accessibility checkpoints as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI).

Accessibility measures

Some of the measures we have taken to ensure our site is accessible include:

Our website uses relative font sizes to enable users to change the size of text on the page
We use alternative text for all images on our website
All our web pages use valid XHTML
We provide text-only versions for all Powerpoint documents available from our website
We conduct regular validation checks to ensure the HTML code of our web pages is valid
We run regular spot checks of our pages against accessibility testing tools
We perform periodic audits of our site against WAI Priority 1 and 2 checkpoints and fix any errors

Compliance with web accessibility is an ongoing process which we are regularly working to improve. Being a new government Department, our content is currently spread across several different websites. In view of this, there may be some content which does not yet meet all the guidelines. If you experience problems accessing any of the information on our site, please contact our web team at website.manager@dius.gov.uk and we will try our best to fix the problem or provide the information in an alternative format.

Browser compatibility

The design and functionality of this website has been tested on the following browsers and platforms:

Windows: Internet Explorer 5.5, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 1.5, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, Chrome 0.2
Macintosh: Firefox 3, Safari 3
Linux: Firefox 1.5, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Opera 9.5

Help with seeing our website

Accessible design

Our website uses colour combinations intended to provide sufficient contrast between background and foreground across the site.

Changing the text size and screen resolution

Depending on which web browser you are using, this can be done in the following ways:

Internet Explorer: select View > Text size
Mozilla Firefox: select View > Zoom
Opera: select View > Zoom
Safari: select View > Make text [Bigger / Smaller / Normal Size]

Alternatively you can change the resolution of your computer screen to make the entire screen display bigger or smaller. Depending on which sort of computer you are using, this can be done in the following ways:

Microsoft Windows computer: select Start > Control Panel > Display > Settings
Apple Macintosh computer: select System Preferences > Displays > Resolution

Help with navigating our site

Using your mouse to navigate our website

If you are using a Microsoft Windows computer, you can change a number of control options on your mouse, including the speed of the pointer or the wheel, how quickly you need to double-click, and swapping the buttons for left and right-handed use.

To change your mouse options click the Start button in the bottom left of your screen and select Control Panel > Mouse.

If you are using an Apple Macintosh computer, please visit the Apple Accessibility website for more information on how to change your settings.

Using your keyboard to navigate our website

Opinion is divided on whether access keys (keyboard shortcuts) help or hinder users when navigating a website. Until best practice on use of access keys emerges, we have chosen not to implement them on the DIUS website.

However, it is still possible to navigate our website using your keyboard. This can be done using the following keys:

Arrow keys to scroll up or down the page
Tab key to move between links
Return or Enter key to select a link
Backspace key to go back to the previous page

Help with accessing PDFs on our website

If you are having trouble reading a PDF document on this website, Adobe offers a free online tool for converting PDF documents to HTML or text. To use the tool you will need to know the url(http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20090703192524/http://www.dius.gov.uk/about_us/about_this_website/web address) of the document you want to convert. This can be found in the browser address bar at the top of the screen and begins with http://

Help with finding out more

The BBC's 'My Web, My Way' website is a useful resource for anyone who has difficulty browsing the internet. The site explains the many ways you can change your browser, computer, keyboard and mouse settings to make the web more accessible to you.

Contact us

If you experience problems accessing any of the information on our site, please contact our web team at website.manager@dius.gov.uk and we will try our best to fix the problem or provide the information in an alternative format.