Making web pages more accessible

The Drug Misuse Information Scotland website is committed to maintaining and improving on our levels of accessibility. Many of these developments are designed to improve accessibility for users with disabilities. If you are having difficulty accessing any of our pages using adaptive technology please e-mail us.

Changing your IE Browser
Internet Explorer has a wide range of features that improve accessibility of web pages on the Internet. The instructions for all these changes can be found in the help text of your browser.

Increasing the size of text
You can zoom in on specific areas of the site by using the Microsoft Magnifier this can be launched from the accessibility menu and has various options allowing the user to zoom in on specific areas of the screen. The Magnafier is intended to provide a minimum level of functionality for users with visual impairments. For daily use users may find the need for a utility program with higher functionality. A list of windows based magnification utilities is available from: http://www.microsoft.com/enable/

To make the screen resolution bigger, change your display settings using the control panel in your Settings menu. The Drug Misuse Information Scotland website has greatest readability at the 800 x 600 setting or above.

Changing the background colour
You may find that reading white text on a black background is easier for you to read. To change the colours on your browser select Tools, Accessibility, and then check all boxes. Select Tools, Colours, and select your background, font, and link colours.

Applying your own stylesheet
It is possible to apply your own stylesheet to websites to improve readability this can be done from the Tools Internet Options menu

Advanced options
These advanced options can be found by selecting Tools from the main menu, Internet Options, and the Advanced tab.

Using a screen reader or screen magnification
You may need to make sure the system caret moves with focus/selection changes. Uncheck the checkbox for "move system caret". Clear the checkboxes for "smooth scrolling and enable page transitions", which may create errors. Uncheck the box for "play sounds" so that it does not interfere with the screen reader reading the text aloud.

Using alt text to understand an image
Select Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, and then tick the checkbox for "always expand alt text for images".

Using voice recognition software
Clear the checkboxes for "smooth scrolling and enable page transitions", which may create errors.

If you have low vision
You may wish to only see the text on the page. Uncheck the boxes for "show pictures", "play animation's" and "play videos".
You may wish to print the pages to read later. Uncheck the "print backgrounds and images" checkbox so that only text is printed.

Changing your Netscape browser
Increasing the size of the text
Select Edit, then Preferences, then Fonts.
Changing the background colour
Select Edit, then Preferences, then Colors.

Using the site without a mouse
The site can be used without a mouse. There are shortcut keys that will take you to commonly used pages such as the home page and the search page.
To use these shortcut keys hold down the ALT key (PC) or CONTROL key (Apple Macintosh) and then one of the keys in the table below. In some browsers you may have to press enter to confirm your choice.

This website has been validated as W3C compliant at the following levels: