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Accessibility

This accessibility statement applies to the Welsh Government’s information on https://airquality.gov.wales.

It outlines how accessible the service is, how to report problems and how to request information in an alternative format. You can access these pages from the footer.

Using this website

This website is run by Ricardo Energy & Environment on behalf of the Welsh Government. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
  • use most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is

We’re aware that at present the website is not fully accessible. Ricardo Energy & Environment are working closely with the Welsh Government to ensure an improvement plan is drawn up and executed.

  • Not all colours provide sufficient contrast
  • IFRAME element does not have element content
  • Not all elements use an ALT, TITLE or linked label attribute
  • Tables with no valid ARIA attribute
  • Pages reference an external style sheet
  • Data table does not use TH to markup headers
  • Links with no text (for example links associated with an image only).

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

In order to help us better meet your needs, please tell us the alternative format you would like to receive, and if you use any assistive technology please let us know.

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 15 working days.

Reporting accessibility issues with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that are not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, contact: jenny.thomas@ricardo.com

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Ricardo Energy & Environment on behalf of the Welsh Government is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non-accessible content

The content that is not accessible is outlined below with details of:

  • where it fails the success criteria
  • planned dates for when issues will be fixed

1. Ensures elements with ARIA roles have all required ARIA attributes

The element tag <div role="heading"> should be given a required attribute. (TBD).

Suggested solution

The appropriate templates should be altered to provide the required mark-up attributes.

Planned dates for a fix

Expected in September 2021

2. Ensures all elements with a role attribute use a valid value

The element tag <div class="col-sm-12" role="footer"> should be given an appropriate valid aria role value. (TBD). It’s presumed that the role="footer" is not a valid value.

Suggested solution

The appropriate templates should be altered to provide the required mark-up attributes.

Planned dates for a fix

Expected in September 2021

3. Ensures the contrast between foreground and background colours meets WCAG 2 AA contrast ratio thresholds

This is a general issue throughout the site. There are numerous places in the design where it's deemed that the contrast between the foreground text and the background is insufficient. The colours and design are based were based on the then current Welsh Government GEL guidelines.

Suggested solution

The sites design and colours should be reviewed in line with the latest standards and modified accordingly.

Planned dates for a fix

Expected in November 2021

4. Ensures every id attribute value is unique

There are some sections of the page mark-up where an element id is used more than once. This is due to the default mark-up defined by forms and blocks developed independently. This can lead to duplications on pages where various blocks are assembled together. For example, on the sites front page both the "Search" block and the "Sign up now to receive the latest Welsh air quality bulletins" forms both use an id of "edit-action".

Suggested solution

Review such duplications and change one or other when a clash is found.

Planned dates for a fix

Expected in November 2021

5. Ensures headings have discernible text

When a section <div role="heading"> is defined some discernible heading should be provided.

Planned dates for a fix

Expected in December 2021

6. Ensures the order of headings is semantically correct

The heading tags <h1>, <h2>,<h3> etc should ideally appear in a semantically sensible order. In other words, h1 can contain h2 sections which can contain h3 sections.

This is not always followed as the tags have generally been used to define styles rather than the semantic structure of the content.

Suggested solution

The use of the headings could be altered to be semantically correct with additional classes used to define the actual styling beyond any defaults.

Planned dates for a fix

Expected in December 2021

7. Ensures <img> elements have alternate text or a role of none or presentation

There are numerous locations throughout the site where images have been added without suitable alternative text descriptions being provided.

Suggested solution

Suitable alt text tags should be provided for every image.

Planned dates for a fix

Expected in December 2021

8. Ensures the contentinfo landmark is at top level

Applied to the following mark-up:

<footer class="footer" role="contentinfo">

Suggested solution

More investigation is required as to exactly what this issue involves.

Planned dates for a fix

Expected in December 2021

9. Ensures the complementary landmark or aside is at top level

Associated with the mark-up of the sidebars on some pages.

<aside class="col-sm-4 sidenav" role="complementary">

Suggested solution

The mark-up should be reviewed and altered accordingly. It may be that the structure of the pages needs modification to correct this issue.

Planned dates for a fix

Expected in December 2021

10. Ensures links and buttons have discernible text

There are links on the site, such as images and graphic buttons that do not provide discernible text as to their function.

Suggested solution

In some cases some redesign may be required such as on the front page where some of the block (e.g. Reports and Seminars) have links in the images that are not directly attributable to the heading beneath.

Planned dates for a fix

Expected in December 2021

PDFs and other documents

We know that some of our older documents (published before 23 September 2018) are not accessible. For example, some of them:

  • are not marked up in a way that allows screen reader users to understand them
  • are not tagged up properly, for example they do not contain proper headings
  • are not written in plain English

Some of these are historic documents and are not essential to providing our services. These types of documents are exempt from the regulations. We do not currently have any plans to make them accessible.

If you need to access information in one of these document types, please contact us and ask for an alternative format.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 11 June 2021.

This website was last tested on 7 November 2019 using https://www.deque.com/axe/

We tested the website available at https://airquality.gov.wales