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Accessibility Statement

We are committed to improving our website and services accessibility, for deaf children and young people and everyone who uses tools to access content and information.

We know that some areas of the site are not fully accessible for all, we are making improvements gradually. See below for areas we are aware of and what we are doing to make them accessible.

If you find any area of the website or our services to be inaccessible for you, please email us (Subject: accessibility Body: URL/service area, Browser, OS) and let us know the URL of the page you were on, or what you were doing. If you can tell us if you are using a mobile, laptop or PC and the operating system and browser that is also helpful. If you don’t know that, you don’t need to include it.

Known accessibility issues

Accordions

The issue

We know that accordions are not fully readable by screen readers. The main issue is the text in the drop down can’t be read if the section is closed so you can’t access the content in that section when using a screen reader.

Our approach

We are working with our development agency to see if we can fix this issue, the alternative will be to use a long form content page with headers that are always open rather than accordions.

Images

The issue

Not all images have alt text available, so screen readers can’t tell the user what the image is of.

Our approach

We have added an alt text field to all images in the back end of the website, this means we have to complete it when an image is uploaded. It will take us some time to go back through previously uploaded images and add alt text. This is an ongoing process and relies on staff having time to do the work.

The main navigation

The issue

Our top navigation bar has a lot of link levels and choices in it, this can take a long time for a screenreader or other accessibility tools to scan through. By the time users have got to the end of the section they can’t remember all the options, so can’t easily make a selection and find the information they need

Our approach

We will be restructuring out navigation over the coming months and setting a maximum number of links appearing in each section. This will make it easier to find the information for visual users as well as those using other tools.

 

HTML5 Elements

The Issue

We are aware of issues regarding several HTML5 elements within our site being inaccessible. Some of the main issues include but are not limited to, “bad attributes”, “Clickable” controls, “Duplicate ID’s” and “CSS Element” issues. These issues each attribute to being inaccessible to screen readers, difficulty navigating the site without a mouse, and making areas of the site “Unclickable”.

Our Approach

Our in house digital team is currently processing these issues in the back end, in a attempt to alleviate them from the website. What this entails is identifying each issue and resolving it individually. This is an ongoing process and relies on staff having time to do the work.

ARIA Elements

The Issue

Our website is currently experiencing issues regarding ARIA roles, labels and elements. ARIA stands for “Accessible Rich Internet Applications” and it allows us to assign clear and concise roles and labels to our HTML to ensure that they operate efficiently. Currently, we are aware of several instances where ARIA roles and labels are missing, corrupted or incorrect.

Our Approach

Our in house digital team is currently processing these issues in the back end, in a attempt to alleviate them from the website. What this entails is identifying each issue and resolving it individually. This is an ongoing process and relies on staff having time to do the work.

PDFs and other documents

The Issue

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents.

Our Approach

We plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Custom controls

The Issue

We are aware of a particular issue pertaining to our implemented custom controls i.e. keyboard controls, do not use an accessibility API, or do so incompletely. This would allow users to access and surf the website using their keyboards, as opposed to a mouse.

Our Approach

Our in house digital team is currently processing these issues in the back end, in a attempt to alleviate them from the website. What this entails is identifying each issue and resolving it individually. This is an ongoing process and relies on staff having time to do the work..