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Accessibility

Accessibility


SQA Accreditation continuously works towards creating accessible websites. The structure of the website, and how it displays information is designed to be accessible, and all new content is checked to ensure compliance.

If you have difficulties using sections of SQA Accreditation's website please report this to: the Accreditation team . We will try to amend the content immediately.

Problems accessing the content of this website

If you have problems accessing pages or documents published on this website, please contact SQA Accreditation and we will supply you with the page or document in an accessible format.:

Many of our publications can be produced in alternative formats, including large type, braille and community languages.

Accessibility statement

This website is run by the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

Plain english - it is important what we write is clear, concise and relevant. This ensures all our audiences understand us.

We aim to use plain and accessible language in all our written communications and we are working on making the website text as simple as possible to understand.

What isn't fully accessible:

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We're always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren't listed on this page or think we're not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: SQA Accreditation 

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the 'accessibility regulations'). If you're not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

How to contact us

Technical information about this website's accessibility

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

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Navigation and accessing information

It's not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content. This doesn't meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.4 (orientation).

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents may not meet accessibility standards.

Problems are:

  1. PDF graphics with missing ALT attributes
  2. The metadata stream in the Catalog dictionary does not include the PDF/UA identifier

Our six-monthly check gives us a list of files which are not compliant, which we work through on a regular basis to fix.

The accessibility regulations don't require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they're not essential to providing our services.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish meet accessibility standards.

Please note our documents always provide a logical reading order, although headings may not always be hierarchical.

Some documents published on our websites are created by other organisations and may not meet SQA's accessibility requirements.

Live video

Live video streams don't have captions. This doesn't meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4 (captions - live).

We don't plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

How we test this website

This website (all pages) was last tested on 09/05/2023. The test was carried out by the digital team

We tested: our main website available at https://accreditation.sqa.org.uk/

We used: Commercially available product: https://www.powermapper.com/

What we're doing to improve accessibility

We test the website every six months and fix any accessibility errors we find.

We are training staff in accessibility awareness and clear and confident writing.

This statement was prepared on 20/09/19. It was last updated on 09/05/2023.

Screen reader setting recommendations

Users of screen readers should note that this site makes use of Title and Acronym, and so will gain more from the site if they configure their screen reader to pick up these attributes.

For users of JAWS we recommend the following sort order 'title|text|alt|href' as the best combination to set.

Access keys

Access keys provide a quick way to navigate round the site without using a mouse, and on this site they are based on the UK Government Access Keys system.

The keys are used in conjunction with Alt or Ctrl and Enter keys which vary depending on your browser.

Windows users can navigate with the accesskey feature by typing ALT+Accesskey. On the Mac, you would use CTRL+Accesskey. Internet Explorer users may also need to hit the “enter” key to activate a link.

Instructions

  1. Hold down
    • 'Alt' key if using Internet Explorer for Windows
    • 'Alt' and 'Shift' key if using Mozilla/Firefox on Windows
    • 'Ctrl' on Mac, or if using Safari on a Mac 'Alt' on Windows for Opera on Windows ('Alt' and 'Shift' are required in some circumstances)
  2. and simultaneously select a key from the list below
    • 3. you may need to also press 'Enter' if using Internet Explorer for Windows on a PC - other browsers go to the page immediately.
    • 0 - Accessibility and Access Key details
    • 1 - Navigate back to Home Page
    • 9 - Feedback to the SQA
    • S - Skip to Section Navigation links

These keys have been selected so as not to conflict with those in use by Browsers, Word, Acrobat Reader and assistive technologies such as JAWS, Supernova and HomePageReader.

Get help

AbilityNet provides guidance about how to:

The Adobe site offers:

More information on accessibility: