Accessibility

Using this website

This website is run by Croydon Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

• Change colour theme and contrast levels
• Zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
• Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard

We have also used high resolution Hero banner images which will be a feature across the blog site. We also ask all of our Authors to provide high resolution images to accompany blog posts. Non-compliant images will not be published.

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

How accessible this website is

The website uses REM (Rout Element) font size calculations as opposed to PX (Pixels). Opting for the REM option means users with visual impairment are able to resize text using their browser settings.

• Both colour themes and contrast levels have been tested to WCAG level AA
• This website has been designed to be compatible with all modern browsers.

We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible:

• You can’t modify the line height or spacing of text
• Contributor submitted and live video streams don’t have captions

What to do if you can’t access parts of this website

email: digital@croydon.gov.uk

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 24 hours.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on [23/05/2019]. The test was carried out by our user researchers, product manager and design teams within Croydon Council.

We tested parts of the website with members of the Croydon Disability Staff Network. The parts of website that was tested with the network are as follows:

• The theme (light/dark) switcher
• Searching for a blog post
• Subscribing to the blog post
• Contributing to the blog site
• Using Zoomtext application
• Tested on multiple devices

We decided to test these pages as these are the main pages we envisage the majority of our users to visit.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

To improve the accessibility of our website, we aim to carry out ongoing user research and end to end testing of all features to ensure full accessibility to all our users.

The features we aim to improve and make accessible to ours users are:

• Listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and Voiceover)
• Navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
• Maintaining a standard layout and navigation structure throughout
• Using headings, paragraphs, lists and other HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) to create a logical document structure
• Allowing visitors to resize all text using their browser settings
• Using plain backgrounds to improve the readability of all text
• Using foreground and background colour combinations which have sufficient contrast and are not known to cause problems to those with visual impairments
• Using alt attributes and/or titles on all images where appropriate, and ensuring that all alt and title attributes are meaningful
• Designing layouts to work satisfactorily over a range of screen resolutions
• Ensuring all hyperlinks use descriptive and meaningful text
• Avoiding short-hand language such as “Click here”
• Using plain English
• Using a written style that is straightforward and understandable

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, contact: digital@croydon.gov.uk.