This statement was last updated on May 31st 2024.
Introduction
Before you start using a piece of software or web application, it's important to make sure that it is accessible to all users, including those with visual, hearing, and motor impairments. We believe that everybody should be able to use statscloud and we're dedicated to making sure the web application meets recommended accessibility standards so that it is usable for anyone, regardless of technical or physical ability.
This accessibility statement clarifies what is meant by accessibility, outlines the considerations and standards used by statscloud to ensure the application is accessible, and explains where and how statscloud meets these. The document also highlights where statscloud does not meet these standards and outlines when and how these will be addressed in future.
What is accessibility?
Accessibility refers to the act of designing a website so that it can be used by everyone. For a website to be accessible, it should be usable by individuals with:
- Visual impairments, including severly sight impaired individuals (blind), partially signed people, and those with colour bindness.
- Hearing impairments, including those who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Mobility issues, including those who cannot easily use a mouse or traditional keyboard.
- Cognitive difficulties, including those with dyslexia, autism or learning difficulties.
In addition to those with visual, hearing, mobility or cognitive impairments, accessibility can also refer to general ease-of-use of the application. It is important to make sure a website is intuitive and easy to use, that it works across multiple devices (touch devices, laptops and desktops), and is able to work on slower internet connections.
Everybody has the right to use the web, and so we should ensure we take appropriate steps to make websites accessible to everyone.
What accessibility standards are being used for statscloud.app?
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are an internationally-recognised set of recommendations to ensure websites are accessible for everybody. The latest version of these guidelines (2.2) was published on 5th October 2023.
The guidelines outline three levels of comformance; level A (lowest), AA, and AAA (highest). The level at which a website performs is referred to the success criteria and, for a website to be accessible, this success criteria must be met. The minimum success criteria we are aiming to achieve for statscloud.app is level AA.
How is statscloud.app tested for accessibility?
To ensure the statscloud web application is as accessible as possible, it is tested internally using a variety of tools, including the native FireFox Accessibility Inspector, the Lighthouse plugin for Chrome, and various other accessibility extensions available for FireFox and Chrome (including Axe Web Accessibility Testing and the WAVE Evaluation tool). The app is also tested using well-known screenreaders, including NVDA and JAWS across all common browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge).
How accessible is statscloud.app?
The current version of statscloud abides by WCAG 2.2 standards. The app is developed with these guidelines in mind and we test the app regularly to ensure these standards continue to be met. However, if you encounter any accessibility issues with the app, please contact us at contact@statscloud.app and we will endeavour to remedy these are soon as possible.
The following sections break down accessibility into different sections and provide a commentary on how statscloud reaches (or aims to reach) them.
Technical
The statscloud.app website has been built using World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for HTML and CSS. The statscloud app displays correctly in all common browsers (including Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge). As statscloud.app uses compliant HTML/CSS code, any future browsers will also display the content on the website correctly.
The statscloud.app website and the app itself was designed to work on all devices, including smartphones, tablets, Chromebooks, as well as laptops and desktops. It has a responsive design so that the interface changes for the size of the window using it.
Contrast
Websites need to be designed to ensure that that can be read by users with low vision or colour blindness. To ensure statscloud is usable to individuals with visual difficulties, the app has been designed to make sure that any text appearing on screen has a contrast value of at least 4.5:1, as stated by Level AA standards set by the WCAG 2.1, though we aim for AAA where possible.
In addition, statscloud has a 'dark mode' which offers a new, darker colour palette. Not only is dark mode more environmentally friendly, it is also designed to reduce eye strain. 'Dark mode' in statscloud is enabled by default when your device's operating system's dark mode is switched on. However, you can switch dark mode on manually by visiting the options menu in the top-right corner of the app.
Zooming
Websites should be designed such that users can 'zoom in' to a page if they find the text is too difficult to read. When doing so, the text should become larger (and thus more legible) without disappearing off screen. statscloud has been designed to make sure this is possible: The layout of the app changes to best suit the size of the window it is being viewed on. This not only means the app can be used on a variety of devices (including smartphones and tablets), it also means users of the desktop site can zoom in and make use of the larger 'touch-screen' layout. At present, users can zoom in to a desktop window by up to 300%.
Reduced motion
Some users may be sensitive to movement (animations) on screens (e.g. those with vestibular disorders) which can cause a loss of balance and vertigo, migraines or nausea. As many websites and software applications use animations as part of their user-interface, it's important to make sure that these animations can be switched off. In statscloud, all user-interface animations are disabled when users have chosen to 'reduce motion' in the accessibility settings on their device.
Images and icons
Websites are required to label each image or icon that appears on screen with a description so these can be read out by screenreaders. All of the images and icons used in the statscloud.app application include a valid description. For the most part, icons are purely decorative and correspond to text headings which appear adjacent to them. Therefore, to avoid confusing and overwhelming users with the icon content, most of these will not by read out by screenreaders. Instead, only the text attached to them will be read out.
All charts in statscloud.app have titles and descriptions that can be interpreted by screen readers. These descriptions are designed to provide an explanation of what the chart shows visually. The description states the type of chart, what appears on the axes, and summarises key findings about the chart (e.g., what the highest and lowest values are).
Buttons and inputs
Similar to images and icons, any input elements (including buttons, text entry fields, checkboxes and radio buttons) need to be labelled appropriately so they can be read by screenreaders. To assist with mobility, these input elements should also be designed so they can be activated with just a keyboard. This is the case with the statscloud web application; all buttons and input elements have valid labels attached to them and can be activated with just a keyboard.
In addition, all buttons and inputs in the app are a minimum of 24x24 pixels in size and have a solid 2-pixel border when focused by a mouse or keyboard so they are easily recognised.
Keyboard navigation
Not all website users are able to use a mouse, so webpages should be designed so that users can navigate them using a keyboard alone.
statscloud was designed to be usable with a keyboard alone. Users can navigate to all user input elements (buttons, text inputs, links, checkboxes) using the Tab key and activate any interactive elements (e.g. buttons, links and checkboxes) with the space bar or Enter key.
Note: If you're using Safari as your browser, you'll need to enable the 'tab' key in the browser settings to allow you to highlight each input element. To do so, open up Preferences, and go to the 'Advanced' tab. From here, just check the box that says 'Press Tab to highlight each item on a web page'. (The reason this is not enabled by default remains a mystery to this day.)
The keyboard shortcuts require use of the 'Alt' key. While this is not an issue for most browsers (Chrome, Safari, Edge), please note that Firefox prevents web apps from taking control of the 'Alt' key (and this is a well-known issue). Instead, pressing the 'Alt' key in Firefox will take focus away from the statscloud app and open up the browser's menu system.
One way around this issue is to press the 'Esc' key immediately after the 'Alt' key to give focus back to the statscloud app. Therefore, instead of pushing 'Alt' + '1' to navigate to the 'Data' menu, you would push 'Alt' + 'Esc' + '1'. This clearly isn't an ideal solution so, for users who require or would like to make use of keyboard navigation, we would recommend using another browser.
Screen readers
Accessible websites should be designed so that they can be read clearly by a screen reader. Common examples of screen readers include JAWS, NVDA, and VoiceOver.
The statscloud web application has been designed to follow the guidelines set by W3C. For instance, trivial or non-essential components of the website (decorative icons) are ignored by screen readers, all interactive elements have labels written specifically for them, and interactive functions (such as menus and dialog boxes) are announced when users trigger them.
While we have tried to ensure that the user-experience for screen reader users is as smooth as possible, we are constantly evaluating the app so we can continue to make improvements where neccessary.
Contact
If you encounter any issues with accessibility on statscloud, or there is something you would like to bring to our attention, please do feel free to contact us at contact@statscloud.app.