9: Re: Best website designs and settings to meet government accessibility guidelines? (response to 4)
Posted by Voice Admin on 21/10/21 11:13

Currently the best official answer I can give is this:

Voice allows you to build a site that is WCAG compliant, but doesn't guarantee it.

(In the same way that a car allows you to obey all the rules of the road but of course cannot guarantee that you do.)

The reason we can't guarantee it is that a lot of WCAG is about how you create your content, which we have no control over. For example how you structure your menus, what text you put into links, or what ALT text you provide for images.

So, you need to be familiar with the aims of WCAG and create your site with that in mind.

For this same reason I don't believe that any website builder guarantees that a site meets all WCAG guidelines.

There are some useful documents about WCAG here.

I realise my answer is a bit vague and probably not what you were looking for. So I'll try to be more specific.

Going forward Voice will aim to ensure that:

  1. All Voice themes and applications meet WCAG guidelines. (We will test them for this)
  2. Where it is found that a theme or application does not meet guidelines we will make reasonable efforts to fix it.
  3. That the system allows your content to be fully WCAG compliant (e.g., they allow you to create ALT text for all images).

Our aim is that public bodies that need to meet WCAG standards can build sites on Voice with confidence and without having to worry excessively about it.

I'll add a more formal statement of this to the main site in due course. There are actually quite a lot of things going on with Voice at the moment, which will gradually become apparent. (I won't spoil the surprise by pre-announcing anything though!)

Oh, and I forgot to mention: Voice is free and always will be.

Thanks

Joe - Voice Admin

11: Re: Best website designs and settings to meet government accessibility guidelines? (response to 9)
Posted by Adriana Jones on 21/10/21 13:26

Hi Joe

That's great.  That does help me a lot, and I appreciate your full and thorough response.  I will continue to look into this, including what we need to do ourselves as a Council.

Once again, thanks for your response.

Kind regards

Adriana

12: Re: Best website designs and settings to meet government accessibility guidelines? (response to 9)
Posted by Adriana Jones on 21/10/21 13:31

Joe, one more quick quesiton - Is Voice Cyber Essentials Certified?

Adriana

13: Re: Best website designs and settings to meet government accessibility guidelines? (response to 12)
Posted by Voice Admin on 22/10/21 16:07

No, Voice isn't Cyber Essentials certified - though we have in the past had an independent penetration test done on the system, and fixed all known vulnerabilities.

Thanks

Joe - Voice Admin

14: Re: Best website designs and settings to meet government accessibility guidelines? (response to 9)
Posted by sue potter on 16/06/25 12:24

Hi Joe 

I am currently looking at adding an accessibility statement to our website. 

I have found examples of statements, one of which says

"This website endeavours to conform to level Double-A of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for people with disabilities. Conformance with these guidelines will help make the web more user friendly for all people.

This website has been built using code compliant with W3C standards for HTML and CSS. The website displays correctly in current browsers and using standards compliant HTML/CSS code means any future browsers will also display it correctly" 

Would the above 2 statements apply to the Voice platform? I understand accessibility is also down to how we are using Voice... but that aside, is it possible to use the above/say we aim to meet the above?

Many thanks for any further insight and advice

Sue

 

15: Re: Best website designs and settings to meet government accessibility guidelines? (response to 14)
Posted by Joe Oldak on 17/06/25 09:50

I think they are good and reasonable statements and apply well to Voice.

I do try to make things work with AA standard. I think AAA is too difficult in many cases, and requires a lot of manual (and presumably expensive) checking and verification.

Do you think it would be useful if I added a default accessibility statement into the footer links of Voice sites? Along with the standard Cookies and Privacy statements?

I am also aware that Voice could improve some areas of accessibility, which I'll continue to look into. I think there are more improvements that can be made in the standard components and themes (e.g, in the grids layouts produced by filtered item lists).

Thanks

Joe

16: Re: Best website designs and settings to meet government accessibility guidelines? (response to 15)
Posted by sue potter on 17/06/25 12:45

Many thanks Joe

I think an Accessibility Statement on the footer of Voice sites would be great. Having your technical expertise to provide an accurate reflection of how Voice aims to meet that standard would be v reassuring.

On many examples I have seen, they also acknowledge aspects they are aware need improving so including what you mention above would also be useful.

Thanks

Sue