Always keeping you, our Tenants at Heart, we’re keen to make our services easier for everyone to use. We’re proud to share that we’ve been awarded AA status for accessibility under the WCAG 2.2 standards – a big step toward making sure we’re digitally inclusive.
What is WCAG 2.2 and AA status?
WCAG 2.2 standards – or the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, version 2.2 – are a set of universal rules that help make website content easier for everyone to use – especially people with disabilities. The guidelines are split into three levels, or ‘success criteria’:
- A: basic accessibility
- AA: good accessibility (the level most organisations aim for)
- AAA: excellent accessibility (mostly used for special cases)
This means that both our tenant website and our group site meet a high standard of accessibility, making them clearer, more flexible, and easier to use for everyone. “Accessibility” under the guidelines covers several disabilities, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, language, learning, and neurological disabilities.
How does this help me?
Whether you're using a screen reader or a keyboard, here are some of the ways we’ve made our website more accessible to help you:
- Addressed keyboard accessibility issues – For people who use a keyboard instead of a mouse, due to physical disabilities or chronic conditions, we’ve made the outline around each element more visible. This lets you clearly see which element is highlighted as you tab through a webpage.
- Corrected all heading tags – Also known as ‘H tags’, screen readers use these to read headings aloud. This let’s visually impaired users choose which sections of a web page they want to read.
- Added manual captions and transcriptions to all videos for people with a hearing impairment.
- Added alt-tags to help describe images for visually impaired people.
- Enabled language change using Google Translate, and contrast levels and font sizes using browser or device settings.
- Enabled zoom in up to 500% without the text spilling off the screen.
Our commitment to you
We’re committed to making sure all the ways you connect with us are accessible and easy to use and getting an AA rating for our websites is just the beginning. You can see our accessibility certification badge here.
Your feedback always shapes what we do, so if you spot something that’s not working well or have ideas for making things even easier, please email us at communications@midlandheart.org.uk
