Website accessibility statement

At WaterAid, everything we do is guided by our values of respect, collaboration, accountability, innovation, courage and integrity. We stand against all forms of racism, injustice, and inequality across all our channels, including digital.

In line with these values, we have set a minimum digital accessibility standard for all content available on our website. We strive to achieve Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 AA standard on our site.

This statement outlines what we do to ensure the website is accessible, as well as the areas we need to improve.

Information about this website’s accessibility

Text

  • The smallest font size on this website is 12 pixels in height, for image credits. Body content on this website is 16 pixels and headings are 32 pixels. 
  • Heading text is legible against the page background, with a contrast ratio of at least 3:1.
  • Body text is legible against the page background, with a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.
  • Text is structured with nested headings, presented in a meaningful order, which describe the topic or purpose of the content.
  • Text can be resized without loss of content or functionality.
  • Any unusual or industry-specific words and phrases are explained in simple English.

Links

  • The text of all links is descriptive (or if this isn't practical, we provide alternative text) to make its purpose clear.
  • The first link on every page bypasses the navigation to move straight to the content. This is hidden by default in a standard browser but ‘skip to main content’ is accessible if required.
  • Page addresses (URLs) are readable by humans and are permanent wherever possible.
  • All links and buttons have a keyboard focus indicator which makes them clearly visible.

Forms

  • All form controls and fields are properly and clearly labelled.
  • All crucial form fields are checked for errors when the form is submitted.
  • Any error found is described to the user in text, along with suggestions for how to correct the error.
  • All forms have a correct focus order, so they can be navigated using the Tab key on your keyboard.
  • All forms can be submitted using the Return ↵ or Enter key.
  • All input elements, e.g. checkboxes, can be selected using the space bar.

Visual design

  • This website uses cascading style sheets (CSS) for visual design and layout.
  • We have made the navigation consistent across mobile and desktop.

Mobile

  • This website is accessible on smartphones and tablets.
  • Page layout and content respond to the size of the browser window to make best use of the space available.
  • Buttons and navigation have a minimum height of 36 pixels for ease of use on touch interfaces.
  • The menu (navigation) collapses on smaller devices to save screen space. It can be reopened with the "menu" button in the top left corner of the site.

What we need to improve

We know some parts of the website are not yet fully accessible, and that we need to work towards improving them. We are aiming to have these issues fixed by the end of 2023.

Website functionality

  • Some embedded interactive elements and graphics have not been updated to include fully accessible functionality.
  • The search function on our FAQs page doesn’t fully work with keyboard and has some colour contrast issues.

Visual design

  • White text on light blue background does not meet contrast requirement.
  • The ‘Search’ magnifying glass icon falls below the minimum contrast ratio requirement of 3:1 on image backgrounds.
  • On some pages with image backgrounds the colour contrast of the main navigation, and the ‘menu’ icon on mobile, is too low.

Content

  • Text in images is not always available in normal text.
  • PDFs need to be checked for correct meta data and alt tags.
  • The full form is not always included wherever shortened forms like abbreviations, initialisms or acronyms are used, for example: water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH). However, we spell out shortened forms in the first instance they are used.
  • The Stories section of our site uses Shorthand, which sometimes uses superscript that isn’t correctly tagged in every instance.

Videos

  • Videos do not provide an audio description for visual content. We need to ensure that videos which provide information visually, also have an audio description or transcript available for non-sighted users. Currently the text within the video is not available to users who rely on screen reader software.
  • Some embedded videos do not provide expected controls such as audio control, track or full screen.
  • Not all videos hosted on WaterAid’s YouTube channel have closed captions (subtitles) if they include spoken words.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

Accessibility is an ongoing process, and we’re always striving to learn and improve.

You can report any accessibility issues by emailing us at [email protected].