Accessibility

We have tried to make this website as accessible as possible to users. We hope that the design and layout meets your needs, and we are continuing to work to improve the accessibility and usability.

User experience design was used in the development of the website. This meant that we focused on the needs and goals of the web visitor, for instance in how they navigate around the application features such as the map and layers tool, what information they need, and how they find it. We have tried to ensure the usability of the website by using this design method.

The interface for navigating the website is intended to be easy to use. It is consistent throughout the site and the pages are arranged in an understandable hierarchy.

This a responsive website that works across devices (PC, laptop, tablet and mobile) and it may be that one of these devices provides better accessibility than another for you.

If you have any suggestions or are experiencing any difficulties in using this website please contact us.

W3C WAI

The development of this website has followed The W3C Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines and is close to meeting WCAG 2.1 AA. During the continuous development of this website, we will endeavour to improve its accessibility. Current notable changes will include improvements to:

• tab indexing;
• colour contrast;
• input element labels;
• user generated content and applied alternative text to images.

Language and Text

• We use plain English as much as possible, avoiding unnecessarily complex language, jargon and acronyms;
• our aim is that text should be legible and readable with good size and contrast;
• you can use the Ctrl key and the + (plus) key to increase the size of the text, and the Ctrl and the - (minus) key to decrease the size;
• we have tried to make links within text easily identifiable.

Screen Readers

• For screen reader software, we have avoided words for links such as ‘click here’ or ‘more’. Instead, the text of the link describes the destination;
• there is no ‘autoplaying’ of video or audio;
• we try to use alternative text to describe images when the images provide extra information or context to text on the web page. Not all such images currently have alternative text, and we are going through the site rectifying this issue. We do not use alternative text for images that are design features on the website and do not impart information that can be taken from the text.

Video and Audio

We don’t rely on sound or videos to present information. Where we use videos that we have produced on the site the video will be subtitled. However, the map feature can link to external user-generated videos on YouTube. Therefore, we cannot guarantee all external videos we link to will have a transcript or subtitles.

Browsers

Your browser will support simple keyboard access on this website. For instance, you will be able to use the Tab key to cycle between selectable things, and the Enter key to select them.

We have tried to make our website compatible with all browsers. However, if you are using an older browser, the website may not format correctly in which case it will not be as easy or enjoyable to use. In this case for this website and other websites your experience will be improved by downloading a newer version of a browser.