Interim Accessibility Statement for NZSL Board

‘Accessibility’ means designing things that disabled people can perceive, use, and understand.

We support accessibility by:

• providing alternate formats
• including accessibility in our policies
• training our staff
• checking our websites for issues, keeping track of issues, and fixing them
• responding positively to complaints
• delivering on the Accessibility Charter external
• working to meet the NZ Government Web Accessibility Standard external.

Accessibility Charter

MSD is a signatory to the Accessibility Charter external. The Accessibility Charter is a commitment to providing accessible information to the public. As part of this commitment, we developed a 5-year programme of work. We have a dedicated team to carry out this work.

Contact us if you need information in alternate formats, such as:

• Easy Read
• New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL)
• Braille
• audio
• large print
• plain text.

In your message, include:

• the web address (URL) of the information you need
• the format you need — for example, Braille.

Contact us if you find accessibility issues on this website. We aim to respond to feedback within 3 business days.

To make a formal complaint, follow the complaints information on the Whaikaha website external.

If you make a complaint and you're not satisfied with the response, you can learn about your options from:

• the Human Rights Commission external
• the Ombudsman external.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) external defines requirements for web accessibility.

We are progressively working to become fully conformant to WCAG 2.1 Level AA.

We did accessibility checks against the New Zealand Government Web Standards external during the development of this website. We will complete an accessibility audit post-website launch and will provide the results of that audit on this page.

Content that is not accessible

There are some accessibility issues that we have not been able to fix before the website launch:

• some buttons disappear when Window high contrast mode is switched on
• the column headings in some tables are not announced by screen readers
• the last column in some tables is not visible with 400% browser zoom
• the page loads automatically as the user selects an option in the ‘In this section’ dropdown that is present on several pages.

This website should work with common browsers and assistive technologies, such as:

• Chrome with JAWS on Windows
• Chrome with keyboard-only input on Windows.

We have not yet tested against other standard assistive technologies.

This website’s accessibility was last checked by MSD in March 2024 by:

• evaluating selected pages against WCAG 2.1 Level AA
• testing selected pages with certain assistive technologies.

Digital Accessibility Team
Ministry of Social Development
Te Manatū Whakahiato Ora

25 March 2024­­­­­.