Accessibility

We are committed to making our website as accessible and user-friendly as possible.

What is accessibility?

Accessibility is the term used to describe how a product, service or place can be easily used by as many people as possible.

It's about making things usable to all people, whatever their age, ability or disability.

How does accessibility impact the City of Sydney?

We are required to ensure our website complies with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (commonly known as WCAG 2.1).

Under these guidelines, all information on our website must be accessible and usable for people of all abilities, including older people as well as people with visual, hearing, cognitive or motor impairments.

What is WCAG 2.1?

WCAG 2.1 is a series of international standards from the Word Wide Web Consortium. The consortium creates guidelines and supporting criteria for the web based on consultation with various interest groups including software developers, private enterprise, governments and its members

The standards identify techniques to create and manage web content in ways that are more accessible to people with disability for example, through assistive technologies like screen readers. Websites that are more accessible are also generally more user-friendly to everyone.

Usability testing

We are committed to making our site as user-friendly as possible. Extensive testing has been conducted on this site with key community groups and stakeholders. This feedback has been integrated into the design, navigation and content of our site. We will continue to develop, evaluate and improve the usability of our site to ensure our users’ needs are being met.

Accessibility testing

Many people use assistive technologies such as screen readers or screen magnifiers to help them view, read and navigate a website. To ensure our site delivers a good experience for all users and works well with newer technologies, the site has been reviewed for accessibility against the WCAG 2.1 requirements.

We have built and modified the site to support accessibility needs so we become more inclusive to a wider audience online.

Request an alternative format

Our website includes a number of portable document format (PDF) files, audio files and video. While we aim to provide information in equally accessible formats, some resources can only be provided efficiently as PDF files. If you require any information on the site in an alternative format such as braille, audio, large text or easy English, please contact us by completing the online form.