Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to the Valla website and web platform.

Valla is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We are continually improving the user experience for everyone, and applying the relevant accessibility standards.

Measures to support accessibility

Valla takes the following measures to ensure accessibility of Valla web platform:

• We include accessibility as part of our mission statement.
• We include accessibility throughout our internal policies.
• We assign clear accessibility goals and responsibilities.
• We follow inclusive and accessible design guidelines used by the GOV.UK Design System, such as including people with disabilities in our design personas

Conformance status

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. Valla web platform is partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA. Partially conformant means that some parts of the content do not fully conform to the accessibility standard.

Feedback

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of Valla web platform. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers on Valla web platform:

E-mail: [email protected]

Twitter: @VallaUK

We try to respond to feedback within 5 business days.

Incompatibility with browsers

The Valla web platform is not broadly compatible with:

• browsers or operating systems older than 3 major versions
• any version of Internet Explorer

Technical specifications

Accessibility of Valla web platform relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:

• HTML
• WAI-ARIA
• CSS
• JavaScript

These technologies are relied upon for conformance with the accessibility standards used.

Limitations and alternatives

Despite our best efforts to ensure accessibility of the Valla website and platform, there may be some limitations.

Below is a description of known limitations, and potential solutions. Please contact us if you observe an issue not listed below.

Known limitations for Valla web platform:

User uploaded content

Uploaded images do not have text alternatives because there is currently no way to associate a text description with an uploaded file.

We hope to allow users to associate alt text with uploaded image files in a future update.

Screen reader support

Screen reader support (such as link purpose, and form input labels) on some pages in the website and platform may be lacking.

We are working to improve our screen reader support across both website and platform as soon as possible.

Colour

Some links in the platform rely on colour alone to be distinguished from other text.

We are working to fix this as soon as possible.

Please email us at [email protected] if you encounter any issues.

Assessment approach

Valla assessed the accessibility of Valla web platform by the following approaches:

• Self-evaluation by designers and engineers during the development process
• automated testing using Google Lighthouse and the axe accessibility testing plugin

Date

This statement was created on 14 February 2023 and last updated on 15 February 2023. The W3C Accessibility Statement Generator Tool was used to help write this statment.