iShare Accessibility

Owned by Kim Stimpson
Last updated: 08 Jun, 2023
2 min read

Why accessibility is important

Accessibility of content on the web is crucial to ensure that everyone has access to the same information and services. For example colour contrast between text and background is important on web pages as it affects some people’s ability to perceive the information (in other words to be able to receive the information visually). The human eye and brain are very good at distinguishing shapes, patterns and colours generally, but for a significant number of people there can be difficulties distinguishing some shades, or some colours.

There are other disability accessibility areas, other than low vision, such as D/deaf and hard of hearing, dyslexia, motor disabilities, users on the autistic spectrum and users of screen readers, who also need to be considered.

The concept of accessibility does not just apply to people with disabilities. Someone’s ability to use a service could be affected by their:

  • location - they could be in a noisy cafe, sunny park or area with slow WiFi

  • health - they may be tired, recovering from a stroke or have a broken arm

  • equipment - they could be on a mobile phone or using an older browser

There is a great blog post on the Dos and Don’ts on designing for Accessibility.

How iShare meets current guidelines

The current minimum government accessibility requirement for digital services is to meet level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1).

iShare in the Cloud customers have access to the current version of iShare (Version 5.8) with the latest features thus guaranteeing compliance to level AA.

Customers using iShare On Premise (from Version 5.8) can meet level AA provided the Success Criteria are followed details of which can be found here.

Whilst we cannot ensure compliance with iShare Version 5.6 (or previous versions) we would be happy to work with you on your site on a chargeable time/materials basis. The most efficient way to do this would be to have the site inspected, then we would work with you to rectify any issues found.

With regards to iShare Logger, whilst we take steps to make the Logger map accessible, we recommend that an alternative means of describing the report location is provided for users that are unable to use a map interface.