Accessibility Statement

Zencity is a digital engagement platform that is used by local governments and placemakers (‘engagement partners’) to engage with the public in a transparent way. Each engagement partner manages and customises their own web-based experience, which contains custom content that is uploaded by the organization(s) facilitating the engagement. 

Members of the public can learn and feedback about changes in their neighbourhoods or the services you use. Zencity aims to have as many members of the public as possible access its platform. 

This accessibility statement is drafted for the resident-facing aspects Zencity, which combine a suite of capabilities: 

  • Web pages for community engagement and communication
  • Web-hosted surveys for gathering community feedback and consultation
  • Emails for delivering community news and providing authenticated access to residents
  • Digital live engagement tools for capturing feedback in a face-to-face setting

Throughout this document, we will refer to the above capabilities as the ‘web platform’. 

Our goal is to be able to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible. We have therefore invested efforts to support popular systems with high market share, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera and Safari VoiceOver on a MAC. We have also addressed JAWS and NVDA assistive technologies for Windows and MAC. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

In order to make the platform more accessible, we incorporate a number of guidelines and restrictions on the ways in which content can be customized which help engagement partners to maintain the highest standards of accessibility, in accordance with WCAG 2.2AA.

We’ve also made the web platform text as simple as possible to understand by actively working with engagement partners to highlight language which may be a little difficult to understand.

Some Zencity websites and webpages incorporate EqualWeb’s automatic accessibility tool in order to make this website more accessible. You will find this on the screen by looking for the accessibility icon:

 

AbilityNet and Knowbility have advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this web platform is

We know some features of the Zencity web platform are not yet fully accessible. For engagement partners who wish to make their content fully accessible, we guide them to avoid using certain features or to make adjustments to make them accessible.

It is the responsibility of our engagement partners to design and build their own content which is added to their Zencity web platform. A list of the features which may not be accessible, depending on how our engagement partner has created their web platform:

  • Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software. We offer tools to assist our engagement partners in making PDF documents more accessible that they may opt into using.
  • Embedded videos may not contain captions. We offer guidance to our engagement partners on how to add captions into their videos.
  • Some images may not contain alternative text descriptions. It is our engagement partner’s responsibility to ensure they are providing alternative text descriptions for their images. The web platform editor provides guidance and validation for the engagement partner.
  • Interactive images (with hover / click functionality) are not always fully accessible to screen reader software and should only be used where there is an alternative navigation option.
  • Colour contrast may not be optimised to be fully compliant. The web platform editor provides guidance and validation for the engagement partner.
  • Headings may not reflect page hierarchy. It is our engagement partner’s responsibility to ensure they are using the correct headings to reflect the hierarchy of content on the page.
  • You may not be able to skip to content on all pages. 
  • Rating and sentiment scale questions (for example, 1–5 scales or star or smiley ratings) may not be accessible if the meaning of the scale is not clearly described in text. For example, a question asking respondents to rate something from 1 to 5 must explain what 1 represents and what 5 represents (e.g. “1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree”). It is the responsibility of the engagement partner to ensure that rating scales include clear textual descriptions of the scale values, either within the question itself or in introductory text immediately before the question. If scale values are not clearly defined in text, this may not meet WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria relating to instructions and form labelling. Alternatively, they should include a text box before the question with a sentence explaining that the following question(s) use a rating scale of 1 to 5 ‘where 1 is X and 5 is X’ or similar.
    This will ensure that WCAG 2.2AA accessibility requirements are met.

Zencity functionality:

  • Collaborative maps (and associated pin-drop or polygon-drawing functionality) are not fully accessible. In order to maintain full compliance in this instance, we recommend to engagement partners to add a parallel ‘Map alternative’ page where they can ask respondents to provide a written location / postcode / address to describe the place instead of dropping a pin.
    • Comment on image questions are not fully accessible.  In order to maintain full compliance in this instance, we recommend to engagement partners to add a parallel ‘Image alternative’ page where they can ask respondents to provide a written description of the image feature that they are referring to.
  • Navigational maps are not fully accessible. In order to maintain full compliance in this instance, we recommend to engagement partners to add hover panels as clickable tiles or hyperlinks above or below the map so that the same journey can be accessed by people who are unable to access the navigational map. 

Technical information about this web platform’s accessibility

Zencity is committed to making its web platform accessible, in accordance with the the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Accessible Canada Act (ACA) and the UK’s Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (where applicable).

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