The bottom line is intent. It is our intention to make our website as accessible to everyone and we are open to comments and suggestions in order to improve.
MV offers where possible free audits and as we are in the process of gaining Charity status we hope this will be a reality in the not to far off future.
It has been drawn to our intention that certain organisations using the threat of government legislation have been emailing without invitation which initsef maybe a GDPR issue with statement like this:
Did you know that over half of public sector websites do not currently meet the UK's accessibility standards?
These regulations are highly complex and technical, but failure to comply with them will become a significant legal and reputational risk to any organisation who falls under this new legislation.
You can ensure your organisation is aware of your new responsibilities to achieve accessibility under the new standard by joining us online for our Ensuring Public Sector Website Accessibility training course on 21st October.
The cost for doing this course is £325 for the public sector. MV offer this advice for free.
We also feel that in this particular instance the unnamed company soliciting for business doesn't even have an accessible website.
There accessibility statement apologises for its failings and blames the platform. Maybe the answer is in getting a new platform that will allow you to have an accessible website.
Here is an extract of their accessibility statement, all of the issues are side tracked with this statement, "because it is not included in the Google Sites builder".
Having approached the company concerned I did get a response please read below:
Thank you for reaching out and raising these issues with the website.
A little bit of background, the website was set up with one of the cheapest options we could find at the time given we were just starting out as a business and Google Sites still tested quite well barring a few heading issues with screen readers. I am aware of many of the accessibility issues offered by the Google sites platform and we have always been committed to moving to a fully accessible platform when it was viable to do so. I am happy to tell you we are looking at options for a new website and platform at the moment as I want us to fully embody the principles we teach to others. While that is ongoing we have always been committed to offering alternative formats where required if a user does have difficulty using the site, or making improvements when feedback is given.
With that said, I will get on with enhancing the font size defaults so that they offer a better reading experience for supernova and other magnifier users. Many of the vision impaired users we had take a look at our website gave us feedback for a preference on the mobile view or use of browser magnification which reflows the content as well instead of using supernova or the Windows magnifier. This is no excuse though and as such I will make changes to improve the experience.
Many thanks again for the feedback, if we need support with AT user testing in future I will be sure to keep you in mind.
The point here that baffles me is that here is a company selling information which is slightly misleading and they want to talk you through accessibility yet they don't practise what they preach.
