Accessibility
Accessibility statement for SchemeReady
This statement covers the SchemeReady website and the SchemeReady app, both run by Denver House Consultancy Ltd. We want as many people as possible to be able to use them.
The standard we work to
We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. The website and the app are partially conformant with that standard. The known exceptions are listed below. We're a private company, so the public sector accessibility regulations don't apply to us. We use the same standard because it's the one most people ask for.
What you should be able to do
- Use every page and every part of the app with a keyboard alone, with a visible focus ring on the thing you are on, and a skip link at the top of every page.
- Zoom to 400 per cent, or use a narrow phone screen, without content being cut off or scrolling sideways.
- Read the text against its background at a contrast of at least 4.5 to 1 in both the light and the dark colour scheme, which follows your device setting.
- Use a screen reader: pages have one main heading, headings in order, landmarks for the header, navigation, main content and footer, labels on every form field, captions on tables and text on every button.
- Hear about things that change without a page load, such as a saved answer, a licence check or a loaded list, through live regions.
- Turn off animation. We honour the reduce motion setting on your device. The home page has one decorative drawing behind the heading. It stops on its own after about half a minute, and never starts if your device asks for reduced motion. It does nothing while the page is in a background tab or scrolled past, and it's hidden from screen readers.
- Understand every state without relying on colour: the four bands always print their names, and errors are written next to the field they belong to.
- Use the site module on a phone with one hand, with buttons at least 44 pixels tall and other targets at least 24 by 24 pixels.
- Open the question and answer sections and the menu without JavaScript, with a plain menu and the company details shown instead.
Known limitations
- PDF files
- The report, action plan, checklist, site visit records, full answers, agenda and template PDFs are made in the browser by a library that doesn't write tagged PDF, so headings, tables and reading order aren't marked for assistive technology. Each of the app's PDFs also has an HTML view with the same content and full heading and table markup. Use that as the accessible version, and print it from the browser if you need paper. Tell us if anything in it isn't read correctly.
- Excel files
- The evidence list, action plan and registers workbook are ordinary spreadsheets with header rows, frozen panes and drop-down lists. They work with screen readers in Excel, but sheet-level descriptions are limited. The evidence list and action plan rows are also in the HTML views of the checklist and the action plan.
- The sample report embed
- The sample report page embeds a PDF. If your browser or assistive technology can't read it, use the download link beside it, or the description of each part of the report on the same page.
- Buying
- There is no online checkout. Every buy button leads to a request form on this site, and Denver House Consultancy Ltd invoices you. If you can't use the form, email us and we'll take the request that way.
- The Denver House site
- Links to the expert hour and the company pages go to the Denver House Consultancy website, which has its own design. This statement doesn't cover it.
- Word templates
- The template Word files use Word heading styles and tables, but form fields are plain table cells rather than Word content controls, so a screen reader announces them as table cells.
How we test
Each page and each screen of the app is checked with the keyboard alone, at 400 per cent zoom, with the browser's reduce motion and dark scheme settings, and with a screen reader (VoiceOver on macOS and iOS, and NVDA on Windows where available). Colour pairs are checked against the 4.5 to 1 ratio with a script before any change to the stylesheet. We have not yet commissioned an external audit of the site.
Reporting a problem
If you find something you can't use, or you need any of our content in another format, email [email protected] with the page or screen, what you were trying to do, and the browser and assistive technology you were using. We'll reply soon and fix anything we can. If the problem is in a PDF, we'll point you to the HTML view, which we can also send as a file.
What we are working on
- Tagged PDFs of the report, once we can make them in the browser.
- A text-only export of the report for people who prefer plain documents.
- An external review of the app's site module by someone who uses a screen reader on a phone.
Technical information
The website is plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with no framework. The pages work without JavaScript apart from the shared menu, the price and buy links and the live template list, each of which has a plain fallback on the page. The app needs JavaScript. It saves your answers to your account, and keeps a copy in your browser so the site walk works with no signal. It has been tested in current versions of Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari on desktop, and Safari on iOS and Chrome on Android.