Our accessibility principles

We strive to achieve the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 AA level of compliance. 

This ensures that we're using internationally recognised standards to bench-mark accessibility compliance and that we’re building software using industry best practice. It also ensures that our products exhibit our core company values of equality, diversity and inclusion. 

Accessibility is the responsibility of a whole team, not just one person.

Embedding it in your team's mindset will help prevent accessibility issues occurring. 

Accessibility should be factored into everything we do from the start.

It’s not a checklist item to consider in only some projects or at the end of a process. Factoring accessibility into every step of a project will make the process far easier.   

We shouldn't make assumptions about our users. 

Making a product accessible doesn’t mean targeting a specific subset of people. Accessible design – also called universal design – is about making products usable by the greatest number of people possible. We shouldn’t assume that we know how our users are engaging with our content. It may be ‘seen’ by various assistive technologies, including automated tools and screen readers. It may also be navigated in various ways, including using only a keyboard.  

We focus on end-to-end user journeys

Including online and offline experiences, rather than individual pages and automated reporting. User's with accessibility needs often invest more time completing tasks. Finding out late in a journey that it’s not possible to complete may be more frustrating than not being able to begin it. 

2018 saw  new regulations for public-sector websites that mean they must follow WCAG’s AA standard by law. Many other countries have similar laws. In some cases, these laws also cover private and third-sector websites. Investing in accessibility now will ensure that we’re prepared if UK public-sector laws evolve to include the third sector.