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Accessibility

We are striving to make our website and all other communications as accessible as possible.

This accessibility statement applies to www.nilgosc.org.uk. This is the website for NILGOSC (Northern Ireland Local Government Officers’ Superannuation Committee) which is the administering authority for the Local Government Pension Scheme (Northern Ireland).

This website is run by NILGOSC.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen.
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader.

We have also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

This website is compatible with:

Google Chrome, Safari, Microsoft Edge and Firefox.

Google Chrome

The Chrome browser supports screen readers and magnifiers and offers people with low vision full-page zoom, high-contrast colour, and extensions.

Products and Features – Google Accessibility

Safari

Safari offers many accessibility options.

Accessibility – Apple (UK)

Microsoft Edge

Microsoft Edge offers many accessibility options to help increase readability and to work better with assistive technology.

Accessibility features in Microsoft Edge – Microsoft Support

FireFox

Firefox includes many features to make the browser and web content accessible to all users, including those who have low vision, no vision, or limited ability to use a keyboard or mouse. 

Accessibility features in Firefox – Make Firefox and web content work for all users | Firefox Help (mozilla.org)

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

How accessible this website is.

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • videos provided by a third party, such as YouTube, do not have a ‘Stop’ or ‘Pause’ button. The user must activate the ‘Play’ button again to stop the video.
  • older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, audio recording or braille:

We will consider your request and get back to you in 10 days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are committed to ongoing accessibility improvements.

If you would like to give us some feedback or are having difficulty accessing this website for any reason, please let us know and we will do our best to resolve the issue. You can contact us by email on [email protected] or via phone on 0345 3197 325.

Enforcement procedure

The Equalities Commission for Northern Ireland (ECNI) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018, as amended (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equalities Commission for Northern Ireland (ECNI).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

We provide a minicom service for people who are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment. To access this service please call 18001 0345 3197 325.

If you contact us before visiting our office, we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.

Find out how to contact us by visiting the Contact Us page of our website.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

NILGOSC is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018, as amended.

Compliance status

When assessed in June 2023 this website was partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. We are currently working with our website provider to address the issues identified and the site will be retested in February 2024.  The non-compliances are listed below.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

  • Not all forms have labelled fields. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1, 1.3.1, 1.3.5, 2.5.3, 3.3.2 and 4.1.2.
  • Missing ARIA references. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1.
  • Some visible labels do not match the ARIA labels. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1, 1.3.1, 2.5.3, 1.3.5, 3.3.2 and 4.1.2.
  • Some pages contain duplicate ID’s. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.1.
  • There is insufficient colour contrast on some form fields. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 and 1.4.11.
  • There are some inaccessible non-HTML documents on our website which were created after 23 September 2018. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1, 1.3.1, 1.3.2, 2.4.2 and 3.1.1.

We plan to fix all of the above issues by February 2024.

Disproportionate burden

There are a number of documents on the website which fall within the scope of the regulations, and which are currently available only in a pdf format which does not comply with the accessibility requirement.  NILGOSC has carried out an assessment and has concluded that making these documents accessible would place a disproportionate burden on the organisation.  This conclusion was reached because the documents appear to be seldom accessed, that it would take considerable time to convert the documents, and that NILGOSC will provide any of these documents in an accessible format on request by a user.  Further, NILGOSC intends to replace each of these documents with an accessible document when each is updated or amended. NILGOSC will also ensure that all future non-html documents added to the website are in an accessible format.

Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services. Therefore, we will not fix any PDFs or documents published before that date unless they are essential to providing our services.

In relation to any reasonable request, we can arrange for an accessible version to be made available. Any new documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

There are also a number of documents developed and funded by third parties (85 at the time of writing).  NILGOSC does not have any control over the format of these documents.  These include legislation; documents created by the Government Actuary’s Department; and documents created by AVC providers including Utmost Life and Prudential.

What we are doing to improve accessibility

We have recently completed an audit of our website which revealed that it is not fully compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. We are currently working with our website provider to address the issues identified in the report and the site will be retested in February 2024.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 18 January 2024.

The website was last tested in June 2023. The test was carried out by Shaw Trust Accessibility Services.

The entire website was tested using automated evaluation tools. We also identified 21 specific pages which where manually tested by an experienced team of pan-disabled testers. These pages were chosen as they contain a range of layouts, media and functions including text, images, videos, tables, forms and calculators.

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