Accessibility
Contents
What is accessibility?
Learn how to make web content accessible
Learn how to make documents accessible
What is accessibility?
It is a legal requirement that all content published on public service websites is accessible to everyone. This includes, but is not limited to, people with restricted mobility, people for whom English is a second language, people with learning difficulties, people with visual impairments and people who are busy and stressed. Our website needs to be available to, and usable by, people with specific access requirements.
Text, images, video and other content published on southwark.gov.uk, as well as documents uploaded to the site, need to meet an accessibility standard set by the government – WCAG 2.1 level AA.
Learn how to make your web content accessible
This page uses and rephrases information produced by Helen Wilson at Worcestershire County Council. The original SCULPT accessibility tool pages can be found here. The SCULPT model provides practical guidance on how to make council website content accessible. It covers six key areas:
Structure
Many readers of Southwark’s website use a screen reader to find the information they need. As the SCULPT website explains:
“a screen reader doesn’t just read out loud word for word, it also has some clever features that simulate a navigation menu of chapters or topics within the document. With this navigation screen reader users can also quickly and easily tab through to get to content they need. If you are using Assist software to check your document, Assist will flag issues with structure and explain how to fix them.
This useful navigation is provided when you apply a headings structure to your document, such as Heading 1, Heading 2 and Heading 3”
- Every document uploaded to a council website should have a title which needs to be formatted as Heading 1
- The main sections of your document should be formatted as Heading 2
- Subsections of Heading 2 sections should be formatted as Heading 3
Colour and contrast
Poor colour contrast can make information hard to read. The WebAim contrast checker is a good way to check if your colours have strong enough contrast.
Accessibility checkers such as Assist or Microsoft Word’s built-in accessibility checker will show you a list of things to fix to make your document accessible, including text with poor contrast.
This video shows how to change contrast in Word. More tools for checking and changing colour and contrast are available on the SCULPT pages.
Use of images
The SCULPT chapter on images explains that:
“There are four very simple things to consider when adding images to web pages or documents.
- use images that support the text
- never use an image instead of text
- use correct image sizes (on the web it is best to have images around 150kb)
- use alt text on images”
Alt text is text that literally describes what an image includes. It is important because it means people who cannot view an image can access it through a screen reader or keyboard navigation software.
It’s important to remember that:
- accessibility checker software such as Assist will show you which images need alt text and how to add it
- images should not include text; if an image includes text, repeat the text somewhere near to the image
- videos should have captions and transcripts
When adding a link to a document or webpage, it is important to use a descriptive link rather than just pasting the link or writing something non-descriptive like “click here”. This is because:
- “people who use screen readers sometimes might read the content of the page and then bring up a menu of the links separately to tab through and visit afterwards” (SCULPT); in this situation a description is needed to give context to the links
- “click here” or “read more” don’t tell the person using the screen reader what the link contains
- the way screen readers read out web addresses is not convenient for the person using the screen reader, as Worcestershire County Council’s guide explains:
“A long web address link written like this:
https://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/info/20794/sculpt_for_accessibility/2229/sculpt_for_accessibility/5
Would read out on a screen reader menu as:
h t t p s colon forward slash forward slash w w w dot worcestershire dot gov dot uk forward slash info forward slash 2 0 7 9 4 forward slash sculpt underscore for underscore accessibility forward slash 2 2 2 9 forward slash sculpt underscore for underscore accessibility forward slash 5”
"SCULPT for accessibility’s guidance on links" is an example of an accessible way to display a link.
When adding a link to an email address, type out the full email address and make it into a hyperlink, for example contentdesign@southwark.gov.uk
Plain English
Our webpages have a duty to:
- provide clear information
- make it as easy as possible for residents to complete important tasks online
For these reasons it is important to:
- put the most important information at the top of the page
- use clear and simple language
- avoid technical terms where possible
- add a clear and simple description of technical terms when they can’t be avoided
- avoid jargon
- use whole words, not acronyms
- arrange information in a logical way
- avoid repetition
- accompany each field of a form with clear and concise instructions
More guidance on using plain English is available from SCULPT and from the Plain English Campaign.
Tables
People using screen readers or keyboard navigation can use the tab button to move through documents and webpages. Screen readers determine the best order to tab through a page or document based on the way it is formatted.
It is important to use simple table structures so that screen readers can understand the table’s logic.
Things to avoid when making tables:
- blank cells: the screen reader might interpret this as the end of the table and stop reading it
- columns or rows without headers: screen readers identify rows and columns using headers
- merged cells or nested tables: these make it difficult for screen readers to move through a table in the right order
Learn to make documents accessible
Documents are less accessible than webpages. In general we try to publish webpages instead of documents. However, sometimes there are situations where we need to upload a document to the website.
When producing new documents to upload to southwark.gov.uk, you must check their accessibility using our accessibility checker tools. Please ensure you have the correct software before sending us a document. if you send a document which does not meet accessibility standards, it will be returned to you to check and change until it meets the standards.
You will need the following software to check your documents:
- Assist for Word, Excel, PowerPoint or other MS Office documents
- Adobe Acrobat for InDesign documents or to check a PDF whose original file is not available
SCULPT copyright information
SCULPT by Helen Wilson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on work at Worcestershire County Council.
Page last updated: 23 June 2023
