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

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

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

Adriana

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