Accessibility statement
Northumberland Community and Voluntary Action, (NCVA) is committed to equality of access for all persons regardless of physical or mental abilities. Public sector web accessibility legislation does not apply directly to NCVA, however we nonetheless seek to comply with the spirit and recognised practice of the relevant legislation.
This commitment extends to this website and thus NCVA seeks to achieve and maintain high standards of accessibility online.
Compliance status
The site is designed and developed with WCAG2.1 Accessibility Standard in mind. Because technology changes regularly and new content is added to the site, we would state that the site achieves Level AA compliance and strives toward Level AAA.
Every effort is made to maintain accessibility standards through the site using the key design principles: perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. Errors and omissions excepted.
Periodic audits are conducted to that end, at least on an annual basis.
Accessibility toolbox
The site features an accessibility toolbox that enables users to set preferences for their own use, rendering the site fully accessible for most visual conditions. The control settings are:
- Increased or decreased text size
- Greyscale view
- High contrast view
- Negative contrast view
- Light background view
- Underlined hyperlinks
- Readable font setting (although the site uses highly readable fonts, this setting will improve readability for some users)
The toolbox menu is accessed through the red icon at the top right of the screen as shown above, works identically on on desktop, tablet or mobile and is easily resent in a single click.
Use of Plain English
Efforts are made to ensure that all copy on the site is written in plain English, avoiding the use of jargon and ‘sector-speak’. Plain English is important for accessibility as it does not pre-suppose knowledge of content and optimises readability and screen-reader friendliness.
Non-accessible content
Where content which cannot be made accessible we attempt to provide alternatives. NCVA has limited resources and in certain cases making content accessible when not developed by NCVA may represent a disproportionate burden as described in the relevant legislation. Third party content may be referenced on the site over which NCVA does not have control and which is outside the scope of this policy as it is neither funded nor developed by the organisation.
Use of Images
Images are an important party of the experience of websites and are a key element of non-verbal communication in the case of various different abilities. Images are used for aesthetic purposes and where this is the case no additional accessibility compliance is required, however NCVA seeks to ensure that titles and alternative text (Alt-tags) are available for illustrative as well as communicative images.
Fonts and display
Font usage within the site, type size and default leading are selected for easy on-screen reading. Accessible fonts are specified within the site code. Colour is used for aesthetic purposes rather than as any kind of guidepost. Headings and titles seek to be descriptive wherever practical.
Browsers
Modern browsers offer a range of accessibility features that enable the user to configure their own experience. These features combined with the design of the site offer wide ranging accessibility and control, including automated captioning, text size and so on. The browser and add-in applications control many of the accessibility features necessary fully to utilise modern websites.
The NCVA site is tested with multiple browsers on multiple devices, however NCVA cannot warrant that the site will function as intended on all existing or future browser releases or on browsers now considered obsolete.
Preparation of this statement
This statement was developed in August 2022 and first deployed in September 2022.
Feedback and contact information
Users are encouraged, without prejudice, to draw our attention to issues they may feel affect the accessibility or to apparent errors or omissions.