Website accessibility
The ICAEW website has been designed to be accessible to a wide ranging audience, including people with sight and hearing impairments. Our site has been developed to meet W3C web standards and aims to achieve AA compliance with WCAG2 accessibility.
How the site is built for accessibility
Here are details on how we make the site accessible:
Layout
We use cascading style sheets (CSS) to control site layout and presentation.
This means that:
- screen reader users do not have to listen to information about the page display to get to the content;
- browser users can apply their own user stylesheet to customise how the site appears to them or use built in browser features such as zoom to view the site in the way which best suits them.
Navigation
Site navigation appears at the start of the page. Screen reader users can bypass navigation by using the ‘Skip to content’ link at the start of the page. Related content navigation is listed after the main content.
Content
Content on the site has been written and formatted to be accessible. Examples of this approach include preceding sections of text with a heading, using meaningful text for links and use of the alt attribute to describe images.
Site accessibility limitations
We aim to communicate as clearly and simply as possible but some articles require a level of technical understanding due to the nature of the topic they cover. We develop our site to work with a wide range of the most popular current browsers but are not able to actively support older versions of browsers. Website content is still accessible by turning off stylesheets.
Browser support
ICAEW understands and accepts that web pages cannot be made that will render identically for every user. With web browsers being produced by numerous vendors, subject to frequent updates and having a range of different rendering engines on multiple operating systems it is not ICAEW's intention that web pages look identical in all browsers.
Web browser versions are assigned a level of support based on an analysis of website user statistics to ensure that resources are used to give the optimum user experience to the greatest number of users.
- Level 1 support - 5% or more of sessions
- Level 2 support - 2% to 5% of sessions
- Level 3 support - Less than 2% of sessions
The approach of progressive enhancement will be used across HTML, CSS and JavaScript to provide an enhanced experience to users of more capable browsers in a way that does not prevent browsers not supporting these features, or with these features disabled, from accessing basic content.
Support levels
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Level 1 support
-
- All content must be readable, usable and all functionality work.
- Differences to presentation will be kept to a minimum.
- CSS layouts must be rendered to present users with a fully styled version of the page.
- Browser support objectives should be considered where inevitable browser variations occur.
- Pages should be developed to give the best experience to the browser which affects the greatest number of users.
- Browser/version combinations with site usage in excess of 5% should be given level 1 support.
- New versions of Level 1 browsers are deemed to be Level 1 support even when usage numbers are less than 5%
-
Level 2 support
-
- All core content must be readable, usable and navigation work.
- Any degradation from Level 1 supported browsers must be graceful and must not obscure content.
- Pages may be delivered with reduced or no CSS styling to ensure content access.
- Browser/version combinations with site usage of between 2% and 5% should be given level 2 support.
-
Level 3 support
-
- Level 3 browsers are not tested against and not supported.
- Browser/version combinations with site usage of less than 2% should be regarded as having level 3 support.
- Browsers not named in the browser support table may be regarded as having level 3 support.
- Level 3 browsers may have pages rendered without styling to ensure content is presented through clear semantic HTML markup.
Browser support table
| Browser | Chrome | Safari | Edge | Firefox | IE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Level 1 | 92 | 12+ | 93+ | - | - |
| Level 2 | - | - | 92 | - | - |
| Level 3 | 91 and earlier | 11 and earlier | 91 and earlier | All versions | All versions |
Browser usage statistics for ICAEW.com (1 Sept 2021 - 1 Oct 2021)
| Browser | Session | % of session |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome | 588,404 | 57.57% |
| Safari | 210,319 | 20.58% |
| Edge | 153,518 | 15.02% |
| Firefox | 24,524 | 2.40% |
| Internet Explorer | 15,243 | 1.49% |
More information
For more information on getting the best experience of the web for you, we recommend visiting the BBC My Web, My Way website for advice on how to get the most from the accessibility features and assistive technologies available for your computer.
If you have any suggestions or have encountered any difficulties with accessibility on our site, please let us know by emailing digital@icaew.com