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Accessibility features

Āhuatanga Āheitanga

Accessibility statement for Office of the Ombudsman

The Office of the Ombudsman is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We are continually improving the user experience for everyone, and applying the relevant accessibility standards including the NZ Government Web Standards.

Measures to support accessibility

The Office of the Ombudsman takes the following measures to ensure the accessibility of our website:

  • Including accessibility as part of our mission statement.
  • Including accessibility throughout our internal policies.

Conformance status

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for disabled people. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. Office of the Ombudsman is partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA. Partially conformant means that some parts of the content do not fully conform to the accessibility standard

Additional accessibility considerations

Our goal is WCAG 2.1 Level AA conformance. Videos have captions and/or transcripts and some have sign language interpretation (Level AAA).

Feedback

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of the Office of the Ombudsman's website. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers on our website:

Compatibility with browsers and assistive technology

The Office of the Ombudsman's website is designed to be compatible with the following assistive technologies:

  • OSX - Voiceover
  • JAWS (in general)

The Office of the Ombudsman's website is not compatible with:

  • Browsers older than 2 major versions, (including Internet Explorer 10 and below)
  • Mobile operating systems older than 3 years

Technical specifications

Accessibility of the Office of the Ombudsman's website relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of your web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:

  • HTML
  • WAI-ARIA
  • CSS
  • JavaScript

We rely on these technologies to conform with the accessibility standards used.

Limitations and alternatives

Despite our best efforts to ensure the accessibility of the Office of the Ombudsman's website, there may be some limitations. Below is a description of known limitations, and potential solutions. Please contact us if you observe an issue not listed below.

Known limitations for the Office of the Ombudsman's website:

  1. Official Information Calculators: Entering dates could prove difficult for users using assistive technology. Please contact us if you need assistance.
  2. Interactive help widgets for the public and public sector agencies: Users that use assistive technology or older browsers or mobile devices, can use our text alternatives.
    1. Help for members of the public (text alternative)
    2. Help for public sector agencies (text alternative)

Assessment approach

The Office of the Ombudsman assessed the accessibility of this website by the following approaches:

  • Evaluation by the vendor who developed the website.
  • Evaluation by the functional user acceptance tester.
  • Evaluation by the Disability Rights team at the Office of the Ombudsman.

Talk to us about the website

Please contact us to share your ideas, suggestions, or comments.