Accessibility

This accessibility statement applies to www.mosl.co.uk.

What we are doing to improve accessibility

Ensuring all users can access our content is important to us. We're aware that our website is not as accessible as it could be, and are taking steps to mitigate this by undertaking an audit by Shaw Trust, against Website Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 A and AA criteria. As of June 2023, we are making the necessary improvements outlined in the audit to ensure our website meets the appropriate guidelines. As we do this, we will update this page to highlight any non-accessible content and known limitations.

Whilst we are undertaking this review, we have been taking steps to improve accessibility in a number of areas across our website. Please find a list of them below, which will be updated as appropriate.

Recite Me

To assist with the accessibility of mosl.co.uk, we have embedded an assistive toolbar from Recite Me on each webpage. This toolbar includes the following features:

Audio playback - Have website text read back to you
Text options - Increase or decrease the font size, and choose between 10 different fonts
Colours - Change the background, text and link colours
Ruler tool - Track a page using a full-width ruler
Screen mask - Create a letterbox view for focused viewing of a section of a page
Dictionary - Find definitions of words
Language - Translate the text into 100 different languages, including 35 text to speech languages
Magnifier - Magnify text on screen
Text mode - Remove imagery and view as plain text
Margins - Change text dimensions by narrowing or widening column widths
Download audio - Download text as an audio file.

Users can access the toolbar by selecting the 'Accessibility options' at the top of any page of the MOSL website. Users can save, adjust or reset their settings at any time. There is also a user guide for further assistance. The toolbar can also be used via keyboard shortcuts, the list of which is available in the user guide.

Dashboards and maps

As of January 2024, all maps available on the MOSL website have been updated with the following accessibility improvements:

Higher contrasting colours
Clear labelling using 'show on zoom' feature
Improved colour transparency control using zoom feature to prevent colours merging.

We are aware that there may be a lack of description button labelling on the zoom features on some of the maps. We are also aware that the pop ups within the map segments are not accessible via a keyboard. However, due to our maps being created and embedded via a third-party, we are unable to amend this. All maps do contain hover text, and users are able to zoom in by searching for a particular postcode, or zoom out by searching 'United Kingdom'.

As of February 2024, we have introduced the following improvements to our public dashboards:

Higher contrasting colours where possible
Added differentiated line markers to line graphs
Added descriptive and unique chart titles
Enabled screen reader capability to ensure dashboard visuals are readable.

We will be implementing more accessibility improvements to all public dashboards before reviewing the dashboards available to registered users and those within My Charts on My MOSL.

Accessible versions of MOSL reports

These documents have been amended to increase accessibility. This includes:

Colour changes (higher contrast colours, added textures)
Adding bookmarks
Alt-tag descriptions to images
Adding header titles/values to tables
Adding a reading order for Adobe Read Out Loud (As of August 2024 we are improving the reading order of these reports for other assistive technologies).

We are aware that detailed timelines and charts may not be accessible to all, therefore we aim to provide descriptions where possible as well as include key milestones/figures within the page copy, reducing the reliance on the chart itself.

Non-accessible content

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

We are aware that there are a number of elements of our website that are inaccessible. These include:

MOSL website colours: We are aware that these colours do not provide sufficient contrast.
MOSL website documentation: We are aware that the majority of our downloadable content (e.g. PDFs, Microsoft Excel documents, Microsoft Word documents) is inaccessible. We are committed to reviewing the accessibility of the documents we upload in 2024/25 as part of our sustainability commitments. As of July 2023, we ensure that we produce more accessible versions of our larger published reports (e.g. business plans), and ensure our monthly Market Focus publication passes as many Adobe PDF accessibility checks as possible.
Videos:
- Not all of our videos include closed captioning and may be produced in a format that is inaccessible to those who are vision impaired. From June 2023 we committed to including accurate closed captioning to all public videos on the MOSL website from at least 2023.
- Not all of our videos have titles and alternative text added. This is due to a restriction in how we are able to embed a video onto the website.
- On pages where more than one video embed is present, we are unable to differentiate between button labels for screen readers due to third-party restrictions.

Disproportionate burden

From June 2024 we added transcription files to our animated videos and the majority of our produced videos from the beginning of 2023. Meeting and screen recording/demos do not currently have descriptive transcriptions attached due to the disproportionate burden to generate them. From June 2024 we will incorporate transcription requests into our video briefs where it is feasible to do so. For other videos, we do also advise if there are transcription elements not provided and reasoning why.

This section will be updated as our accessibility work progresses.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website and are committed to learning from its users. If you have any issues accessing or consuming our content, please contact comms@mosl.co.uk and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was published on 17 May 2023 and was last updated on 25 July 2024.