Does anyone know if e-voice websites meet W3C single A accessibility standards please??
Thank you! We are a charity applying for funding but the requirements state the above.
Yes, it's something we aim to provide with all our themes, I believe they do meet the standards. Though because we don't have complete control of the content we can't guarantee this (e.g., we can't stop a site admin from creating content that is not compliant).
We are always happy to try to improve the themes if we find any areas in which they are not compliant.
Thanks
Joe - Voice Admin
Our Parish Council have a page on the Tewin Village website. I have been asked to check if it is accessable, and have checked it with Wave, a web accessibility evaluation tool recommended by the UK Government website (https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/helping-people-to-use-your-service/testing-for-accessibility). This also says that websites should meet WCAG2.1 as a minimum.
I can fix some of the accessibility issues it found with the Parish Council's page with extra styling, and adding a heading line to a table in the content, but there are a couple I cannot fix myself.
Is there any chance you could:
1) Add a language in the page headers. Either setting it to English, or allowing site admins to set the language?
2) Add a title in the input tag of the "search this site" form.
Currently we are using the bootstrap Lumen style. This gives a lot of Contrast errors, especially for the links. Could you recommend one of the other bootstrap styles which gives more contrast?
Thank you,
Felix Green
admin
www.tewinvillage.co.uk
I have added "en" to the html tag (allowing users to specify language is a good idea, but in practice they're generally English on Voice). I've also added a label to the search input for screen readers.
Regarding the themes - yes you're right the contrast isn't great on the some of the menu links etc. You could try the alternative menu bar colour or different colour schemes. I'm afraid I don't know offhand which ones have the most contrast.
The colour schemes come from BootSwatch. You can look at the samples on their site and decide which you like before trying them on your site. (note that we use Bootstrap v3 not v4)
Thanks
Joe
Hi Joe - I'm afraid its me again.
I am working through trying to resolve some of the accessibility issues on our website - some of which are our errors, however some of which seem to be out of my control. I have checked the forums, and this one seems the most relevant. The biggest issue I have is one of contrast, i.e. when I add a link, the website automatically changes this link to a different colour which has 'very low contrast'. I have tried changing to a number of the different options using Bootstrap, however this does not resolve the issue. The .GOV guidance advises that the contrast ratio between the text and background colour of our website needs to be at least 4.5:1 - can you advise me if there are any of the Bootstrap / BootSwatch colour themes that fulfil this requirement? Thank you so much.
Adriana
Sorry, I don't know which colour templates provide the best contrast ratio, so I'm afraid it's a case of trying them out and finding the one that has enough contrast that you're happy with. Note that the Modern theme does allow you to specify the link colour should that be helpful.
Out of interest, which tool are you using for the WCAG testing?
In better news, there are a few changes in the pipeline that'll help here.
- I'm currently working on a new theme that is built around a simple accessible layout and will have customisable colours, so you can easily select ones that match your brand as well as giving you good accessibility.
This should be available in a few weeks and will be simple for you to switch to from the current themes. - I am looking at adding an accessibility toolkit such as UserWay that can be enabled for any site that wants it. This adds settings to a site that lets visitors increase font size or improve the contrast.
In the meantime you could add the widget yourself to your site by adding the embed code to the theme settings. You can see an example of it in action on the SuperHighways Voice site.
I am also open to other suggestions on how we can improve accessibility.
Thanks
Joe
Hi Joe - thanks for coming back to me. Certainly sounds as though some good updates are on their way.
With regard to the WCAG testing, I am using one of the sites suggested in out Governing Bodies Accessibiity Guide - WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (webaim.org). If you go to this webiste and put in our webiste address it comes up with all sort of alerts for issues I deem to be 'outside of our control' (albeit a couple of issues are directly related to our content).
I will certainly have a look at the 'Modern' Theme and see if this helps.
Once again, thank you for keep responding to these emails - for many of us this is a steep learning curve.
Adriana