Accessibility

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Accessibility Statement for the NABO Website

This accessibility statement applies to: https://www.nabohome.org/

This website is run by the North Atlantic Biocultural Organisation (NABO). NABO is committed to providing a fully accessible website experience for all users of all abilities, including those who rely on assistive technologies like screen readers, screen enlargement software, and alternative keyboard input devices to navigate the web.

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 500% without the text spilling off the screen
• Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
• Listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)
• Use the website without encountering any time limits
• Use the website without encountering any flashing, scrolling or moving text

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand. However, some of our content is technical or scientific, and we use technical or scientific terms where there is no easier wording we could use without changing what the text means.

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Customising the website

Navigation aids for screen readers

If you are using a screen reader or speaking browser, we have special links on every page to help you navigate faster. These are often called ‘skip links’.

These menus will be read out to you. If you are not using assistive software, you will not see these links.

Display settings

The NABO website includes an accessibility toolbar, provided by One Click Accessibility.

This offers the following options for customising the appearance of our website:

• Increase Text Size (though currently this increases it by an insane amount, which is something we need to work on)
• Decrease Text Size
• Grayscale
• High Contrast
• Negative Contrast
• Light Background
• Underline Links
• Readable Font
• Reset

The accessibility toolbar also provides links to our Site Map, Help Pages and Feedback Form.

You can also customise the appearance of our website using your browser settings to make it easier to read and navigate.

Guidance on how to improve accessibility and customise your settings for internet browsers

Internet Explorer remains the browser most compatible with assistive software. Internet Explorer can be used without plugins, but most websites and applications no longer actively support the browser, so you may need to use an alternative. Accessibility features and customisation in Edge, Chrome, Firefox and Safari may require you to install specific plugins.

• Internet Explorer
• Windows Edge
• Chrome
• Firefox
• Safari

Advice on making your device easier to use

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability. This is an external site with suggestions to make your computer more accessible:

AbilityNet – My Computer My Way

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How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible. These are the issues we have been aware of, and have been working to improve:

• Not all language translations are available. Some languages spoken in the NABO research area are not yet available from Google Translate (eg Faroese and Greenlandic). However, others have been left out to keep the list shorter, to focus on those we expected to need most. If your language is missing, please let us know as we may be able to add it.
• Some text size is small, especially on phones. We are keeping a look out for this in testing and fixing it where we find it.
• Tabbing via keyboard is not always logical and/or consistent, and does not always meet contrast focus requirements. We are currently experimenting with outlining the keyboard focus in ‘tripod’ yellow.
• Some parts may not be fully compatible with screen readers. If you are a screen reader user, we apologise, and would appreciate feedback on any issues you find so that we can improve on this.
• Some colour contrasts could be improved. All standard combinations of text and background in our colour scheme were tested using WebAIM Contrast Checker, and all meet at least ‘AA’ standards. All but one combination also meet the ‘AAA’ standard. However, there may be cases where colour contrast could be improved. If you find something unreadable, please do let us know.
• Not all media will have a transcript or be subtitled. Almost all our videos are hosted on Vimeo or YouTube, and we provide information about their captioning options below.
• Some PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software. We hope to improve on this in the future, at least with our own content. We may be able to provide some of our own content in alternative formats, but in the case of postgraduate theses and published papers, we recommend contacting the publisher or author(s).
• Button text may not specify which content will be loaded. In most cases, we have been able to provide a more informative text link, and reword button text to give some indication of the type of content or action that will be the result of pressing it.
• Some carousels autoplay and require hover to pause them instead of having a pause button. We have been adding instructions about this. All carousels have been set to change more slowly than 3 times per second for safety purposes. We have been in contact with the developers of this carousel software to ask for a pause button in future versions, and have received a positive response.
• Some carousels (for downloads) may not have clear direction buttons. However, we have increased the size of the page indicator below it to make this easier to use.
• Some images may have duplicate alt and title text. This is mostly due to a setting in our gallery software, which we have been fixing with javascript wherever we find it.
• Some orders of headings may skip a level. We have been remedying this where we find it.
• The calendar is missing a form label for picking the weekly or monthly view. Unfortunately, we can’t access this to edit it.
• There are duplicate labels in the calendar and events search forms. Unfortunately, these can’t be edited.
• There is a hidden popup window for downloads in the page footer, which can’t be removed but is never activated. This is annoying for us too. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
• Some pages have a content reading level of 10th grade or above, without providing a simplified summary. We hope to provide more simplified summaries in the future.
• Some pages include an animated loading icon. We have been finding these and replacing them with a static icon.
• Some pages include animated counters. These have all been set to last for less than 5 seconds, for safety purposes.

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Ongoing Efforts to Ensure Accessibility

We follow the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 as our guiding principle for determining accessibility. These are internationally agreed-upon standards that cover a wide range of recommendations and best practices for making content useable. As we add new pages and functionality to our website, all designs, code, and content entry practices are automatically checked against these standards.

Website accessibility is an ongoing process. We continually test content and features for WCAG 2.1 Level AA compliance and remediate any issues where possible to ensure we meet or exceed the standards. Testing of our website is performed by our team members using industry-standard tools such as the Accessibility Checker WordPress Plugin, colour contrast analyzers, keyboard-only navigation techniques, and Flesch-Kincaid readability tests.

This is part of our broader effort to make everyone’s experience with NABO a welcoming and enjoyable one. Please note that while we make every effort to provide information accessible for all users, we cannot guarantee the accessibility of third party websites to which we may link.

Tests used on our website

Internet Browsers

This website was tested using Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox.

Accessibility Auditing

The main pages and sample posts on this website were tested for accessibility issues during development using Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker. This tool is also available for our bloggers and editors to check accessibility while editing content.

Colourblindness Testing

This website has been tested for legibility using colourblindness simulating filters from Toptal.com.

 Click to test the home page here.

Colour Contrast Checker

All standard combinations of text and background in our colour scheme were tested using WebAIM Contrast Checker, and all meet at least ‘AA’ standards. All except one also meet the strictest ‘AAA’ standards.

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Accessibility Features On Our Website

The following is a list of items we have included in our website to improve its accessibility:

Accessibility Toolbar

The NABO website includes an accessibility toolbar, provided by One Click Accessibility.

This offers the following options for customising the appearance of our website:

• Increase Text Size (though currently this increases it by an insane amount, which is something we need to work on)
• Decrease Text Size
• Grayscale
• High Contrast
• Negative Contrast
• Light Background
• Underline Links
• Readable Font
• Reset

The accessibility toolbar also provides links to our Site Map, Help Pages and Feedback Form.

Language Translation

The translation service is provided by GTranslate, using Google Translate API.

We have tried to keep the list of languages manageable by focusing on the languages used in the areas covered by NABO research. Unfortunately some languages, including Greenlandic and Faroese, are not yet available. If your language is not available and you would like it to be added to the list, please contact us.

Language Translation is available from the main menu.

Alternatively, you can translate the website’s language here:

 

Neve WordPress Theme

This website is built with WordPress using the Neve Theme from ThemeIsle, which is tagged and listed as Accessibility Ready by WordPress.org.

• Neve Theme
• Accessibility Ready WordPress Themes List

Readable Font

This website’s paragraph text uses the Verdana font, which was designed for legibility on computer, phone and tablet screens as well as legibility in printed form.

Verdana is among the top 10 fonts recommended in ‘Dyslexia Fonts: The Top 10 Dyslexia Friendly Styles‘, by Exceptional Individuals, and is also recommended by the British Dyslexia Association in their Dyslexia friendly style guide.

As also recommended by the Dyslexia friendly style guide, we use a standard size for our paragraph text of 16px. To aid readability, we also use a line height of 1.7em.

For our standard paragraph text colour contrast, we use a high contrast pairing of off-black (charcoal coloured) text against an off-white (snow coloured) background. All our text colour pairings have been tested using colour contrast checkers and colourblindness simulation tools.

Our accessibility toolbar also allows users to underline all links, and change the font, text size and colour scheme of the website.

Reading Time Estimator

An estimate of Reading Time has been added to posts, pages (except the home page), events and locations.
This service is provided by the Reading Time WP plugin by Jason Yingling.

Skip Links for screen readers

If you are using a screen reader or speaking browser, we have ‘skip’ links on every page to help you navigate faster. These menus will be read out to you. If you are not using assistive software, you will not see these links.

Subtitles and Captions

Most of the videos on this website are hosted on YouTube or Vimeo.

Find information about how to use captions on YouTube and Vimeo here:

• ‘Subtitles and captions overview’ by Vimeo Support
• ‘How to Turn on Captions in YouTube’ by Common Sense Media for Families

Text To Speech

The Text to Speech service is provided by the Text To Speech TTS Accessibility plugin from Atlas AiDev.
This service uses the speechSynthesis API, which does not yet support all android phones, or all languages. Please note, the voices and languages provided may change from browser to browser and from device to device.

Currently, we are able to offer this service in English for our news and blog posts. If this proves to be useful, we will hope to expand on this service in the future.

WordPress Accessibility

This website is built using WordPress. The WordPress development community states this about accessibility:

The WordPress community, and the open-source WordPress project, are committed to being as inclusive and accessible as possible. We want users, regardless of device or ability, to be able to publish content and maintain a website or application built with WordPress.

WordPress aims to make the WordPress Admin and bundled themes fully WCAG 2.0 AA compliant, where possible.

• An overview of the WordPress development community’s commitment to accessibility can be found here: https://en-gb.wordpress.org/about/accessibility/
• WordPress Accessibility Coding Standards
• WordPress Accessibility Team
• WordPress Accessibility Handbook
• Reporting Accessibility Issues with WordPress

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Accessibility Support Contact

We welcome comments, questions, and feedback on our website. If you are using assistive technologies and are having difficulty using our website, please either contact us using our form, or email Anthony.Newton@ed.ac.uk. To report something that isn’t working, please use our Bug Report Form. We will do our best to assist you and resolve issues.

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Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was originally prepared on 6th February 2024. The statement followed accessibility testing carried out by Annabel Treshansky in January and February 2024, using both automated and manual methods. The site was tested on a PC, primarily using Google Chrome, alongside Microsoft Edge. Automated testing was carried out using Equalize Digital Accessibility Checker.