Accessibility Statement for Create Gloucestershire

This accessibility statement applies to www.creategloucestershire.co.uk.

Our Approach To Accessibility

Our role is to connect artists, organisations, funders and audiences/participants together in new ways, and we believe that our services should be accessible to people with different access needs.

We believe strongly in removing barriers to access and are regularly learning ways that we can do this. At the core of Create Gloucestershire is a culture of listening and connection, so we welcome any feedback about your experience with accessing our content.

We are using the following tools:

• Inside Gov for advice about accessibility requirements

• The “How to make your content accessible” webinar from Digital Culture Network

• Ability Net

• WebAIM contrast checker

• Basic accessibility check from gov.uk.

• “How to make your online content accessible” guide from the Arts Council

Download our Accessibility Statement

Download our Accessibility Statement and Road Map as a PDF [opens in new window]

Date of last update : October 2022

Conformance status

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. We have used the Basic accessibility check from gov.uk and outlined below how we can do better in the future.

In 2022 we have worked on making the website more usable for everyone by:

• Making sure our use of headings is consistent so that it makes the pages easier to read.

• Keeping our navigation structure consistent so content is easy to find.

• Making it responsive: we use Squarespace for our website so that it works equally on computers, phones and tablets, however we are becoming aware of the automatic settings which will need to be changed.

• Starting to add more alt text to images for screen readers to describe our images

How accessible this website is

Some of the following basic elements of this website are accessible:

• The text reflows in a single column when you change the size of the browser window

• Videos added to the website since 2020 have captions, and/or have been uploaded to YouTube to use their automatic captioning

• All foreground and background colours are checked to ensure sufficient contrast, or given alternative text in the case of images

• Tests using a mobile or tablet device - The page orientation is responsive, it is possible to navigate using just one finger, and not relying on complex motions

• Content is usable when zoomed in or magnified

• Most Pop-ups and interactive or flashing content can be disabled, however there are some gif files which cannot be disabled

• HTML checks - tables and bullet lists are styled properly, video players are accessible

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

• You cannot modify the line height or spacing of text

• Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software

• Some of our older videos do not have captions, audio descriptions or transcripts

• Some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard

• You cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader

• On many of our pages and in many of our documents the images, charts and tables don’t have a description

How to adjust your computer to make websites easier to see and use

There are some changes you can make to your computer to make any website, including ours, easier to see and use on your computer, mobile phone, or tablet.

My Computer My Way is a resource developed by AbilityNet. They have guides that offer step by step instructions on how to adapt your phone, computer or tablet to meet your needs. You can search for a specific need (e.g. making text larger) or filter the guides based on your symptoms (e.g. hand tremor) or condition (e.g. dyslexia).

AbilityNet also offer free webinars on a range of topics of relevance to disabled people. “Our library of recordings is free to access and contains useful information for disabled people, their colleagues, families, friends and the professionals who support them.”

Visit the 'AbilityNet Webinar' page if you would like to know more about the webinars.

Future plans

Websites and technology change over time, and we adapt ours depending on the use. We know that it is important to ensure accessibility is considered throughout this process.

We will do everything we can to make our website more usable and accessible for everyone, and have scheduled bi-annual reviews to evaluate accessibility.

We have also created a ‘Road Map’ below which outlines in more detail what we plan to work on in the future.

Feedback

We welcome your feedback so that we can continue to improve our website and help with any difficulties you may encounter. If you have any feedback or are finding difficulties using our website please let us know:

• Phone: 07897 121236

• E-mail: connect@creategloucestershire.co.uk

We try to respond to feedback within 7 working days.

Roadmap 2022-25

This Roadmap is where we outline in more detail what we plan to work on in the future, to improve how users can access our information. It should explain what we’re doing, and also explain what we’re not doing. “Roadmaps allow you to plan for change. They capture intent, not solutions.” - from this Service Manual from gov.uk.

The goal for CG in 2022-25 is: “make information and resources easier to navigate and access on the website”.

We’ve worked hard to publicly document more of our projects and learning, so that the public can use this knowledge for their own work and research. We’ve learned more about how different users access information, and about different access needs.

Our goal is to make information and resources easier to navigate and access. We are putting steps in place to remove the barriers that prevent anyone accessing, interacting with or understanding our content. This 2022-25 Roadmap should clarify what we plan to do and how we plan to do it.

What we are trying to achieve

We’ve identified some key areas that we need to work on, and these are our goals :

1. Restructure or rename pages and content on the website to make our information easier to find and browse

2. Make sure our content works well with assistive technologies

3. Create habits in our workflow so that we regularly check that our content is accessible

4. Improve our conformance status [as per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)]

1. How we plan to “Restructure or rename pages and content on the website to make our information easier to find and browse”

• Consistent and logical headings - using only one h1 tag per page, then h2 and h3 should be used in logical order to section the content

• Descriptive links to help people identify where the information is - for example, a button saying “download our annual report (PDF)”

• Use well written descriptive page titles (not necessarily visible on the page, but they show up in the tabs, Google searches, and for screen readers)

• Use Colour contrast checker from WebAIM to check colour contrast

• Forms - check form fields are marked up appropriately, check that any error messages are helpful, check users can review their answers before submitting a form, and more.

• Improve the website layout so that users can still use the content to complete any relevant tasks without stylesheets - we can test this using the WAVE tool

2. How we plan to “Make sure our content works well with assistive technologies”

• Make it possible to navigate the pages with a keyboard and also navigate using speech recognition software

• Define content areas so that people can skip through to the relevant area of content (eg. “article” or “footer”)

• Include Alt tags for all images - factual short descriptions no more than 125 characters. If an image is a design element, add an alt tag with no contents so screen readers can skip past it - How to write good alt text

• Ensure all videos have captions and audio descriptions where possible

3. How we plan to “Create habits in our workflow so that we regularly check that our content is accessible”

• Schedule bi-annual reviews to regularly evaluate accessibility

• Create check lists and templates for our PDFs, documents and for website information so that the information we share is consistently accessible

• Test freely available tools to help with these checks, such as the Google Lighthouse Chrome extension, WebAIM WAVE tool, Eye Dropper (Chrome plug in to change colour palette), No Coffee (a vision impairment simulator extension to change the view of your site).

• Listening to parts of the website using a screen reader (such as NVDA) to better understand what improvements need to be made

4. How we plan to “Improve our conformance status”

• Work with an Accessibility Consultant (such as Ability Net and National Registry of Access Consultants) to have an external evaluation conducted and to get experienced recommendations

• Take part in further accessibility training, such as the edX W3C accessibility course

• Create a clear and realistic plan for the website improvements that all team members can understand and contribute to

Inclusive Language

We try to make the content as simple as possible to understand, and you can find out more about our Easy Read journey on this blog post.

We are conscious that the organisation uses a lot of ‘language’ to describe what we do as an innovation hub and network organisation. This often means that we use long sentences, and can default to arts and/or VCSE (Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise) jargon. By October 2023 we want to have undertaken further training and/or conversations with experts to help us navigate the territory of accessible language, without losing the nuances of our less usual practice.

What we also hope to test in 2022-25

• Adding Accessiblity controls to the website for users to adjust the content to their needs (we like how South East Dance display their controls)

• Listening to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver) to better understand what improvements need to be made

• Commissioning one or more artists to produce a series of images to help us explain our content. We’ve learned the value of using images via the Easy Read journey and would like to explore how we can do this in the way we know best - creatively!

• One or more of the Create Glos team taking part in further accessibility training, such as the edX W3C accessibility course

• Creating a small focus working group to check the user experience, or working with creatives who have experience with these technologies.

• Sharing our learning with organisations we work with, so that we can support the sector to become more accessible.