Accessibility Statement

Standards followed

This website is designed and developed in HTML5 to meet the following standards:

• Guidelines for Indian Government Websites and Apps (GIGW) 3.0 (opens in a new window), issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology;
• Level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 (opens in a new window) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), as adopted in GIGW 3.0;
• the Digital Brand Identity Manual (DBIM) 3.0 of the Government of India, for a consistent look, typography and icons.

This supports the aim of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016, that information and services of the Government are accessible to everyone.

Accessibility features

• Skip to main content: a link at the top of every page lets keyboard and screen reader users go straight to the page content.
• Keyboard access: all links, menus, buttons and forms can be used with the keyboard alone, and the item in focus is clearly highlighted.
• Accessibility Controls: the Accessibility button at the top of every page opens a panel to switch on dark (high) contrast, inverted colours, reduced or increased colour saturation, larger or smaller text, highlighted links, hidden images and a big mouse pointer. The choices are remembered in your browser and can be reset at any time.
• Screen reader support: pages use proper headings, landmarks and lists; images have text alternatives; form fields have labels; and data tables have headings.
• Documents and links: links to documents show the file type and size, and links that open in a new window or lead to another website say so.
• No moving content: news and updates are shown as lists that visitors scroll themselves, and the photo slideshow can be paused.
• Consistent layout: the menu, search, breadcrumb and footer are in the same place on every page, and a Site Map lists all pages.
• Icons with text: icons are always shown with a text label, and are not used alone to give information.
• Translation: the language selector at the top of every page translates the page into Hindi and other Indian languages using an online translation service.

For help with these features, and with the screen readers available, see Help.

Known limitations

We work continuously to improve accessibility. At present:

• some older documents are scanned copies (images) in PDF and cannot be read by screen readers. New documents are published in readable (text) form, and the older ones are being replaced as they are revised;
• the online translation is machine translation and may not always be accurate. A full Hindi version of the website is being prepared;
• some information is available through links to other websites. Those websites are maintained by the respective organisations, which are responsible for their accessibility.

If you need a document in an accessible format, please contact us and we will try to provide it.