What is web accessibility and why is it important to us?
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To do this, we aim to meet the standards in the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a variety of disabilities and barriers. Complying with these guidelines helps us to ensure the website is accessible to all people including Blind people and people with motor impairments, visual impairments and cognitive disabilities among others.
The Web is fundamentally designed to work for all people, whatever their hardware, software, language, location, or ability. When the Web meets this goal, it is accessible to people with a diverse range of hearing, movement, sight, and cognitive ability.
— W3C’s Introduction to Web Accessibility
Following our 2023 Accessibility Report
Published in 2023, Accessibility at BC’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner describes how our Office is taking measures to ensure our information, services and physical and digital spaces are accessible to all people in British Columbia. You can learn more about the report and find a plain language summary at: bchumanrights.ca/publications/accessibility-report-2023
The Accessibility report prioritizes, among other things, measures to improve BCOHRC’s external communications and the accessibility of our website in particular.
In response to this priority, we listened to disability advocates and redeveloped our website’s entire code base to build accessibility into the foundation of our site. Users on our website will now have, but are not limited to:
- a logical tabbing order that works for keyboard, mouse users and screen readers on the website’s top navigation menu
- sequential headings on every page to help organize and structure the page for screen readers
- 3:1 colour contrast requirements for large (heading) text and 4.5:1 requirements for regular (body) text. For example, only specific brand colours with enough contrast will be used as a background colour for white text
- custom focus states (visual cues to confirm what element one is focused on) throughout the site for global navigation, linked text, linked images, and call-to-action buttons
- HTML5 landmarks to allow screen reader users to bypass a long list of links in the footer
- a “skip to content” link for users who want to move past the global navigation at the top of each page
- no alt text tags that are either too long or used for decorative images, both of which slow down screen reader users when moving through a page
- carousels (series of images displayed in rotating slides) with a WAI-ARIA “application” role, allowing our team to add context to the image series
- “narrow” content columns to reduce reading fatigue for sighted users
- complete forms with no missing form labels, fieldsets, or other items, so they can be used without fail by keyboard users
Web browser and assistive technology compatibility
We aim to support the widest variety of web browsers and assistive technologies possible so our users can choose the tools that work best for them with as few limitations as possible. “Assistive technologies” here refers to web programs and computer software that users may employ to overcome online barriers and help them read and navigate through web content. Web assistive technologies include screen readers, screen magnifiers, voice recognition and keyboard navigation. Our site is designed to support all major programs for most PC and Mac users including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Mozilla Opera and Microsoft Edge browsers and NVDA, JAWS, Narrator and VoiceOver screen readers.
We tested this site with the following browser and screen reader combinations using the most popular usage combinations according to Accessibility Developer Guide:
- Google Chrome + JAWS
- Google Chrome + NVDA
- Microsoft Edge + Narrator
- Apple Safari + VoiceOver
- Google Chrome + VoiceOver
We also used the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool for its automatic testing capabilities, allowing us to pinpoint accessibility errors in our code, colour contrast errors and also accessibility alerts, the latter of which we audited page by page to determine whether they were valid alerts that helped or hindered our accessibility goals.
Notes, comments, and feedback
Despite our best efforts to ensure everyone is able to use our Office’s website to meet their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of being made accessible or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. If you notice something that isn’t accessible to you, please let us know!
We are also looking into a small list of browser and assistive technology bugs that arose while testing the site across systems and platforms. We will address these issues when the technology has been updated and/or fixed or do manual checks as needed.
Accessibility is a continuing journey. We will add, update and improve our options and features as developing and new technologies become available. This project aims to reach the optimal level of accessibility, as we become aware of new technology. Our Office aims to make our communications as accessible as possible. We welcome feedback at on how we can make our website more accessible.