At the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), we are working to ensure that all of our communications and platforms are as accessible as possible to all users. To this end, in 2023 we partnered with AbilityNet, using their Digital Accessibility Services to conduct a full accessibility review of our website (www.ids.ac.uk).
A key outcome was this new accessibility statement, which applies to our main public website, www.ids.ac.uk.
Scroll down to the ‘Publications’ section for information about our commitment to making our publications accessible to all readers, and how we are compliant with the European Accessibility Act.
Website accessibility
We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website, which means that you should be able to:
- zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
- navigate the website using just a keyboard
- navigate the website using speech recognition software listen to most of the website using a screen reader (most well-known screen readers)
For more advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability, visit the AbilityNet website.
We know some parts of our website are not fully accessible yet – and have listed the issues in the non-accessible content section of this statement.
In November 2024, we implemented a design refresh of the IDS website. As part of this update, we conducted an accessibility review to ensure that the new design elements meet the WCAG 2.1 AA standards.
Feedback and contact information
If you need information on this website in a different format, please contact the IDS Communications and Engagement Team.
Pages reviewed in the accessibility audit
As part of the full accessibility review conducted by AbilityNet, a representative number of pages were checked from the IDS website for accessibility conformance. These were accessed via the following links:
- Homepage – https://www.ids.ac.uk
- Learn – MA Development Studies – https://www.ids.ac.uk/learn-at-ids/ma-development-studies/
- Opinion – https://www.ids.ac.uk/opinions/finding-and-using-causal-hotspots-a-practice-in-the-making
- About – https://www.ids.ac.uk/about/
- People – https://www.ids.ac.uk/people/melissa-leach/
- Publications – https://www.ids.ac.uk/publications/student-wellbeing-in-contexts-of-protracted-violent-conflict/
- Projects – https://www.ids.ac.uk/projects/covid-19-learning-evidence-and-research-programme-for-bangladesh-clear/
- Events – https://www.ids.ac.uk/events/digital-technologies-in-participatory-research/
- Research Clusters – https://www.ids.ac.uk/about/clusters-and-teams/
- Research Clusters detail – https://www.ids.ac.uk/clusters-and-teams/business-markets-and-the-state/
- Contact – https://www.ids.ac.uk/contact/
- Support IDS – https://www.ids.ac.uk/about/support/donate
Reporting accessibility problems with this website
If you find an issue we have not yet identified, please contact the IDS Communications and Engagement Team. We will assess the information you provide and will try our best to fix the issue, before adding the updates as confirmation to this accessibility statement.
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
IDS strives to make our website accessible in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
Compliance status
This website is not currently compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to older content on the site pre-dating February 2020. However, content after this date has been updated to this standard following the accessibility check undertaken by AbilityNet. The non-compliances and exemptions are listed below.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons:
Content issues
Some regular sized text, included within images on the website, does not have sufficient contrast.
Across several graphs and other content, information is provided only through colour and some instructions rely on visual sensory characteristics.
Decorative images across the website are sometimes not marked and do not have appropriate alt text descriptions. Other images sometimes have alt text descriptions which are redundant, and do not provide appropriate context.
This largely affects the accessibility of old content pre-February 2020, which has been previously added to the website and which won’t likely be viewed by the IDS community moving forward.
We have undertaken changes to content post-February 2020 to ensure that it adheres to the version 2,1 AA standard and trained our website editors to make sure that all future website development and content updates adhere to both the level A and AA guidelines as specified in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/).
Disproportionate burden
At this time, we have not made any disproportionate burden claims.
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on 12 January 2024.
This website was last tested on 17 October 2023. The test was carried out externally by IDS’ website development agency. A sample of webpages was tested covering the core user-journey of the site, as listed above. Testing was completed using a mixture of manual, semi-automated and assistive technology tests.
This statement was updated on 21 July 2025 following a design refresh of the IDS website. The updated design was reviewed to ensure continued compliance with accessibility standards.
Publications accessibility
IDS is committed to making its publications accessible to all readers. Alongside our commitment to open access publishing and institutional default Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence, we consider accessibility throughout the workflow, from conception to publication.
eBook accessibility and the European Accessibility Act
In advance of the European Accessibility Act deadline of 28 June 2025, IDS has invested in remediating the most widely used and recently published eBooks on the IDS website. Many eBook titles are available to download in both EPUB and online PDF formats.
- eBook EPUBs are created to be reflowable, using semantic HTML for structure, and including image descriptions (alt text), hyperlinked text, magnification, and page navigation. The files are validated for conformance with the EPUB 3.3 and EPUB Accessibility 1.1 standards using EPUBCheck and Ace by DAISY, and adhere to the WCAG 2.2 AA guidelines.
- eBook PDFs are tagged, contain bookmarks and image descriptions, and are validated using the PAC Checker against the PDF/UA and WCAG 2.2 AA standards.
- All our books are Digital Rights Management (DRM)-free and freely available to download from the IDS website and the IDS OpenDocs repository.
- We work closely with our eBook, Edited Collection and Special Collection typesetters and industry conversion vendors to embed accessibility throughout the production process.
Journal and report accessibility
The IDS Bulletin, our open access journal, is freely available in online PDF and HTML formats. In continual publication since 1968, while we aim to publish all PDFs with searchable text, we cannot guarantee this for some of our older content. HTML, online articles are available for articles published since 2016.
Training and guidance
We are training our staff and working with authors to make our content more accessible, such as in writing image descriptions for visual content. We have updated many of our report and paper templates and adjusted workflows to continually increase the accessibility of the titles that we publish.
Accessibility services
We will be working with RNIB Bookshare to make our eBooks available.
IDS request service
We have a backlist of over 8,000 journal articles, reports, papers and briefings dating back to the 1960s. While we are working hard to make our eBooks accessible, as an open access publisher that does not charge for access to our titles, it has unfortunately not been possible to retrospectively make all of our content accessible.
If you have a query about the accessibility of a publication, or wish to request a publication in accessible format, please contact [email protected].
Accessibility in the IDS building
If you are planning to visiting the IDS building and have accessibility needs, please review the information on the building accessibility page on our website.