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Accessibility

Accessibility Statement

Overview

The Money Advice Service is committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of disability, capability or technology.

We also routinely check web pages – when amendments are made to existing pages and when new pages are released - to ensure that they meet accessibility requirements, and we do respond positively to feedback regarding the accessibility of any of our pages and services.

If you experience any problem accessing the website then please feel free to contact us.

Accessibility guidelines

This site has been developed to conform to level AA of the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0). These guidelines are the internationally recognised benchmark for building accessible web sites. The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines explain how to make websites more accessible for people with disabilities. Conformity to these guidelines also makes websites more user-friendly for all people.

Using the website

We aim to provide the most accessible experience possible for our visitors and have implemented the following accessibility features:

Keyboard navigation

  • Logical and consistent navigation is provided for keyboard users.
  • Links are highlighted on keyboard focus.
  • Our logo links directly to the home page.
  • You can skip to the main content, main navigation (when the page contains it) and the accessibility page by pressing the tab key to navigate through links after the page loads, and then pressing the enter key on the appropriate link.
  • Site-wide search facilities have been implemented.

Screen reader and assistive technology navigation

The website has been designed to be accessible to a variety of screen readers and assistive devices, including:

  • JAWS version 12.0 Screen Reader and above
  • NVDA 2014 and above
  • Apple Voiceover (iOS 8 and above)
  • Dragon Naturally Speaking 11.5 and above
  • ZoomText 9.1 Screen Magnifier and above

Please note that keyboard commands to operate the screen reader will vary depending on the specific assistive device/software you use. You may experience issues with older versions of these applications or other assistive technologies. If you experience any issues, please feel free to contact us.

ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications)

ARIA is a technical specification for ensuring that site structure is accessible. It has been used throughout the site to enhance the experience for visually impaired users.

By assigning ARIA roles and landmarks to web elements, we have enhanced the ability of screen reader users to navigate and interact with our website and some of our in-house tools.

Changing the display colour and font

Although we do not offer any alternate colour schemes to display the website, you can use the controls in your browser to change the size of the text or the colour of the display.

Audio and video players

We currently use the YouTube video player which will default to the HTML5 mode if the user’s browser supports this (Internet Explorer 11 or more recent versions, as well as the latest versions of Chrome, Safari and Firefox).

We recommend using one of these browsers as the HTML5 YouTube video player is more accessible in terms of keyboard navigation, and has clearer focus styles and mostly well-labelled form elements. However there still may be some issues with low colour contrast and using the player with voice-activation software.

If an older browser is used (Internet Explorer 10 or earlier, or older versions of other browsers) then the YouTube video player will load in Flash mode, which contains several known accessibility issues.

All video content on our site has subtitles and/or closed captions.

Audio and video has been set not to play automatically.

Links contain clear text and can be understood out of context for screen reader users.

Links to pages on the same website will open in the same window. Links to pages on external websites will open in a new window. These external links are indicated by a small icon next to the link:

For example: WCAG 2.0 Accessibility Guidelines

Links to downloadable documents and files will open in a new window to avoid conflicting with assistive technologies.

These links will use the following format:

Filename (File Type)

You can open links in a new window by using the keyboard shortcut Shift + Enter in most modern browsers. (The keyboard shortcut for opening links in a new window may be different depending on the browser and operating system.)

Downloadable files

We have made files available to download in a variety of formats. The most common are: Adobe Acrobat (.pdf), Microsoft Word (.doc), and Microsoft Excel (.xls).

If you are unable to open these types of documents, please download and install the latest versions of the free viewer software and online apps:

Mobile considerations

The site has been built responsively, so that it adapts on smaller devices, allowing the user to view and navigate the content with ease. The responsive site has been developed with reference to the work of the World-Wide-Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), taking into consideration the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2) and Mobile Web Best Practices (MWBP 1.0).

iOS and Android devices have a number of built in assistive features that users could take advantage of. For more information please see the following links:

Accessibility limitations

Some technologies and features are likely to cause accessibility issues, such as:

  • Adobe PDF downloadable documents
  • Microsoft Word and Excel downloadable documents
  • Links styled as buttons

We make every effort to overcome these limitations by improving their accessibility and providing accessible alternatives. If you require alternative versions to our downloadable documents (such as plain text or braille), or if you experience any accessibility problems with our site, please contact us.

Some functionality may be delivered by third parties. The Money Advice Service has no control over the accessibility of these applications, however we will attempt to offer an accessible alternative.

Functionality that is provided by third parties and is not accessible, or is partially accessible include:

  • the pop-up survey tool
  • web chat
  • the YouTube video player.

We use a third-party survey tool by Web engage, which is partially accessible. This survey can interrupt a user who is using Voiceover (or similar screen reader) to navigate the page.

We use a third-party survey tool, which contains several accessibility issues. This has been given the ‘aria-hidden’ attribute to hide it from users of screen readers to minimise disruption. We are planning to develop an accessible survey tool in the near future.

Various links are styled to look like buttons. Users of voice recognition software should be aware of this when looking to identify and mark links and buttons on a page.

Several of our tools use the HTML input type=’number’. This provides greater usability (especially for mobile devices) but Dragon 13 does not recognise these fields - this is an issue with the software itself, and users can use keyboard commands to access these elements i.e. by saying ‘tab’ to reach and get focus in the input fields.

Browser compatibility

The site has been cross-platform and cross-browser tested and is currently compatible with modern desktop browsers including:

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 9+; and the latest version of
  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Apple Safari
  • Google Chrome
  • Opera.

The site is compatible with modern mobile browsers including:

  • Safari (iOS) version 6+
  • the latest version of Chrome (iOS) and
  • Android Webkit (version 2.x and 4.x).

The site has been built using progressive enhancement, so content should be available to all browsers. However, you may experience issues with older versions of these browsers or other web browsers. If you experience any issues, please feel free to contact us.

Using Internet Explorer in ‘compatibility mode’ is not fully supported. Whilst the website should still be usable, we recommend that compatibility mode is switched off for MAS sites.

For more advice on your browser’s accessibility settings, please see the browser vendor’s help and support pages.

Web standards and technologies

This website has been developed to conform to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards for HTML (HyperText Mark-up Language) and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

This website is reliant upon HTML and CSS to render content. Additional technologies including JavaScript have been utilised, however, this website is not reliant on these technologies as they are only used to enhance functionality. Every effort has been made to make these technologies as accessible as possible.

Contact us

We are always looking for ways to help people get the best experience from this website. If there is information you think should be included on this page, or if you experience any problem accessing the website then please feel free to contact us on:

You can use our real-time accessibility help feature to report any accessibility issues. It is called AccessIN and can be found at the bottom of each page on our website.

You will be asked to complete a short, simple form as part of the process. Please provide as much information as possible to help us identify and correct the problem quickly.

AccessIN is fully supported by the team at the Digital Accessibility Centre and they will work with us to resolve your problem quickly wherever possible.

Conformance date

This accessibility statement was issued on on 28/09/2018.

We plan to review our accessibility statement on 09/07/2018, however we will update the accessibility statement when a major new feature is added.