Accessibility policy
Date: Wed Mar 04 14:21:32 GMT 2009
Our commitment to making websites accessible
We are committed to making our websites as accessible as possible - to ensure that they can be used by everyone, regardless of any disability they may have.
This is in keeping with Home Office values of:
- delivering for the public
- being professional and innovative
- working openly and collaboratively
- treating everyone with respect
Meeting the needs of disabled users
All of our newer websites were created using a process of user-centred design. This meant that website users tested each stage of the design and development of the website, and disabled users were among those who tested the websites.
The comments and feedback from these tests helped us understand what we need to do to make the users’ experience better.
Core tasks
All of our website users should be able to carry out all of the tasks on our websites, including; filling in forms, ordering publications, reading content and downloading documents.
Alternative formats are available whenever necessary, for example transcripts are available for our YouTube videos.
The accessibility help pages on our websites tell users how they can get help to see, hear, navigate and read and understand our websites.
The levels of accessibility we comply with
We comply with UK government standards minimum recommended standards of:
- WCAG 1.0 Level AA
- British standard BS8878 (which is based on WCAG 1.0 Level AA)
These web standards are available on the COI website; guidelines on delivering inclusive websites.
See it Right with UseAbility accreditation
In addition to these standards we have been accredited with RNIB see it right with usability.
This means that our sites are audited quarterly by the Royal National Institute for the Blind and Usabilitynet, and have been judged to be accessible for visually impaired users. For more information about this see the RNIB website.
The accessibility standards set out by the RNIB are even more detailed than those specified by COI.
Xhtml and CSS
Code should be compliant, valid XHTML Strict 1.0, implementing CSS2 for layout. A logical heading and paragraph structure must be used, with accessible coding taken into account with regards to forms and tables.
Accessible PDFs
We try to make PDF files on our websites accessible to screen readers but we can’t guarantee that all content of every PDF online is accessible. As an alternative we provide a link to Adobe’s online PDF conversion tool that converts the files to HTML 3.2 or text file format.
Browsealoud
Our sites are enabled for Browsealoud – users can download program to reads aloud web page and PDF document content.
Exceptions
Some of our older websites are not compliant with current accessibility guidelines. These sites will be closing and the content merged onto accessible websites. If users cannot access the content they are asked to contact us directly, and we will provide the content in an accessible format.
Awareness of the policy
Making websites accessible is a legal requirement. We circulate this policy and our guidelines to everyone who creates Home Office websites, whether they are a designer, coder or writer, and whether they are a member of staff, or an external supplier.
Ensuring continued accessibility
Our quarterly audits by the RNIB ensure that we are made aware of any accessibility issues; we then include them in our checking processes.
Comments
Please contact us if you have any comments on this policy.
