Date last updated: 8 September 2022
This Accessibility Statement refers to our england.shelter.org.uk and scotland.shelter.org.uk domains. It does not apply to any third-party sites we use.
We are committed to making our website as easy to use as possible for every person who visits. To do this, we use version 2.1 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). We're working towards meeting WCAG's AA standards across all areas of our website, and AAA standards wherever we can.
Accessibility problems we know about
There are parts of our website that aren't fully accessible, which we're working to resolve. For example:
visitors can't access some areas using a keyboard
some errors on forms aren't picked up by assistive technology
there are some missing form labels
the heading structure on some pages is not consistent
How we test our website
We use various automated tools to test our website, including Google Lighthouse, so we can meet WCAG's AA standards.
In April 2021 and May 2022, we commissioned two accessibility audits (through the Royal National Institute of Blind People and Zoonou). These audits tested a representative sample of our website pages against all of the Level A and AA criteria. To make sure we covered a wide range of scenarios, we used a selection of internet browsers and accessibility software in our audit.
Our latest improvements
We have improved accessibility recently by making the following changes:
our England/Scotland country switcher has been improved so that it contains aria-labels that match the visually present button text
iframes have been appropriately titled to give screen reader users more context regarding the information being presented
we've improved the site's mobile experience by ensuring that users can tab through all active page elements with a clear focus state, and that closed elements are not tabbed through
we've had accessibility training delivered for members of our UX Design, Development and Content teams to help improve our understanding of accessibility and make improvements to our products teams' ways of working