The Department has created its website with the aim of making it accessible to the widest range of users, regardless of disability or the device they use to view it.

We have worked with the Shaw Trust to make sure our site is easily accessible, and they have awarded us ‘Shaw Trust Accessible’ web accreditation. They have helped us to make the site suitable for people with

  • low vision
  • blindness
  • colour blindness
  • dyslexia
  • mobility impairments
  • learning difficulties
  • deafness or hardness of hearing
  • autistic spectrum disorders.

During the site’s creation, we engaged users with a range of abilities and requirements. We want to make this an ongoing process as our site grows and evolves.

If you have any difficulty using our site or wish to give us any feedback, please contact us.

Our website complies with the Web Accessibility Initiative’s (WAI) web content accessibility guidelines 2.0, as required under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA). We are ‘double A’ compliant*.

Our site displays correctly in current browsers and by using standards compliant with HTML/CSS code, any future browsers and devices will also display it correctly.

In addition to the following instructions, please also see our help section for tips on how to find content on this site.

Changing text size

PC: Hold down the Ctrl and + key to increase text size. Hold down the Ctrl and – key to decrease text size.

Mac: Hold down the Command and + key to increase text size. Hold down the Command and – key to decrease text size.

The same options can be found in the browser menu: Page > Text size or View > Zoom.

If you wish to increase the text only and avoid zooming all the page elements, select View or Page > Zoom > Zoom text only (Firefox 3 and Safari 4 only).

Increasing colour contrast

You can switch to a black on white colour scheme by clicking on ‘Increase contrast’ under the search box in the top right of every page. Click on 'Default colours' to change back.

Access keys

We have used the UK Government access keys standard on our site:

  • S - Skip navigation
  • 1 - Home page
  • 3 - Site map (A to Z and glossary)
  • 4 - Search
  • 6 - Help
  • 7 - Complaints procedure
  • 8 - Terms and conditions
  • 9 - Feedback form
  • 0 - Access key details (this page)

Other ways we support accessibility on our site

For people that have sight difficulties:

  • support for changing text size
  • support for increasing colour contrast

For people using screen readers:

  • support for access keys
  • ‘Skip to content’ link at the start of every page
  • All content is marked up using the correctly structured HTML.
  • All images contain descriptive alt text.
  • Video content contains an audio description.

For people with hearing difficulties:

  • Video is captioned and audio content is accompanied by a transcript.
  • Video content contains an audio description.

For people with mobility difficulties:

  • All content is accessible without the need of a mouse.
  • ‘Skip to content’ link at the start of every page

For people with difficulties with words and learning:

  • We aim for all our content to be written clearly and simply.

* Exceptions

We currently host all our videos (with the exception of Teachers’ TV) on YouTube and use its media player to display them.

Not all of our content has migrated to the new Department website at this stage and therefore there are a number of websites that have not been fully assessed for accessibility. These websites include

  • Academies Directory
  • NCA Tools
  • Pay Calculator
  • Research
  • Edubase
  • Performance Tables
  • In Your Area
  • SOPS
  • FMS
  • S96
  • RS Gateway
  • One to one tuition data
  • eConsultations
  • Schools Profile
  • Standards Fund
  • CFR
  • Growing Schools
  • Schools Org
  • Schools Recruitment.

Our long-term plan is to bring all our web content into a single accessible website.