Supporting disabled users

Accessibility is mandatory for NZ Government websites and a fundamental human right. We believe that accessible websites benefit everyone.

We adhere to Government web guidelines as best practice principles, integrating them throughout all stages of your project.

Achieving AA Accessibility Standards

We develop web sites using best practice accessibility guidelines as defined by the W3C WCAG 2.1 guidelines (to an AA standard) and, where applicable, the NZ Web Accessibility Standard 1.1 and NZ Web Usability Standard 1.3.

By building sites to an AA accessibility standard, we make sure that users with accessibility issues can navigate and interact with the site without encountering obstacles that cause them to abandon their visit or be unable to complete a process. If you want your site to achieve an AAA accessibility rating, we can advise you on best practice and content management techniques.

Our expertise

Designing for web accessibility

Our designers know that many of the techniques used to design for good web accessibility help all users, so we:

  • Ensure there is sufficient contrast between foreground and background to assist visually-impaired users
  • Make sure that colour is not the sole tool used to convey information to users
  • Provide clear and consistent navigation options and make interactive elements easy to distinguish from other elements of the page
  • Ensure labels are clearly associated with all form elements
  • Make sure that we provide easily identified feedback options.

Building for web accessibility

Our developers take our accessible designs and translate them into accessible web sites. To assist users with visual impairments, we.

  • Use best practice contrast and font-sizing techniques
  • Provide for site users who rely entirely on screen readers by using semantic HTML plus ARIA attributes where appropriate to indicate the functionality attached to given elements on the page, and by using skip links to allow such users to jump directly to the page content
  • Assist those who use keyboard-only navigation by using CSS to clearly indicate where on the page the user has focus
  • Provide the right tools as part of our back-end development work to ensure that content provision meets web accessibility guidelines
  • Provide consultancy and training to client or third party content staff on how to ensure that content they publish on the site will be accessible.

Testing for web accessibility

We test web sites against best practice accessibility guidelines. Where possible, we engage specialist third party accessibility testers to analyse sites and recommend changes to further improve the site for impaired users.