Accessibility statement

This is the accessibility statement for www.careersincare.scot which is run by the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC). We want as many people as possible to be able to use this careers website.

You should be able to change colours and contrast levels, and zoom in up to 300% without any text or content spilling off the screen. If you want to zoom in on a large scale the website will arrange itself in a single column so you won't miss any information.

You should be able to use just a keyboard, or speech recognition software, to navigate through most of the website. You should also be able to listen to most of the website using a screenreader.

We’ve used Plain English to help more people understand and enjoy the information and career stories.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this website is
How to contact us
Enforcement procedure
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Compliance status and non-accessible content
What we’re doing to improve accessibility
Preparation of this accessibility statement
Additional information about this website’s accessibility

1. How accessible this website is

The following parts of the website are not fully accessible. If you are affected by any of these issues please contact us so we can provide the information in another way.

If you are using speech recognition software you may not be able to tag and select individual qualifications within the interactive pathways. This means you may miss additional information. You should be able to tab to each qualification however.
The PDF qualification leaflet is not accessible to screen reader software. The screen reading experience for the careers booklet needs to be improved.
Text size may not increase when the browser's font settings are changed, however you can increase it by using the zoom function on the browser or by pressing Ctrl and +
Sometimes screen readers will read the content of noscript HTML5 tags which are used for the career stories on the social work page and this can be confusing to the listener. We made some improvements to the childcare and social care pages to remove this error, and will do the same for the social work page in future.
Career story videos do not have audio-described versions. We will create audio described versions of videos we produce in future.

2. How to contact us

If you need any information on this website in a different format please email [email protected] or phone the SSSC’s enquiries team on 0345 60 30 891.

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 10 days. SSSC learning and development staff will also offer to contact you directly to provide information about careers if this would be helpful to you.

You can also contact us to report accessibility problems and to let us know if you think we are not meeting requirements. If you want to leave anonymous feedback about any part of this website you can use this feedback form.

3. 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 contact us and you’re not happy with how we respond to your feedback or complaint you can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

4. Technical information about this website’s accessibility

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

5. Compliance status and non-accessible content

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

Non-accessible content

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

1.1.1 Non-text Content: (Level A)

All images have alternative text, and links or buttons have descriptive text or ARIA labels. However when the social work career story list items receive keyboard focus, screen readers are reading out noscript HTML code incorrectly. The noscript code is in place for users with Javascript turned off. We redeveloped the career story areas on the childcare and social care pages in February 2023. We aim to improve the social work page in future to remove this error.

1.3.1 Info and Relationships: (Level A)

• Due to how the site was created it uses a mixture of standard and semantic HTML5. Span tags have been used instead of buttons in several places for example for filtering the career stories. We redeveloped the career story areas on the childcare and social care pages in February 2023. We aim to improve the social work page in future to remove this error.

2.5.3 Label in name (Level A)

Many of the website’s user interface components have HTML attributes or ARIA labels which match what is shown on screen. However improvements are required for the career story filter buttons. We redeveloped the career story areas on the childcare and social care pages in February 2023. We aim to improve the social work page in future to remove this error.

4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (Level A)

We do not think the states, properties and values of all user interface components in the career stories and qualification pathways can be programmatically set. We developed the childcare and social care careers stories in February 2023. Issues remain with the qualification pathways. We improved information about qualifications in the role descriptions for childcare and social care.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

1.2.5 Audio Description (Pre-recorded): (Level AA)

There are no audio descriptions available for the videos on the site. The UK Government accessibility guidance for public sector bodies lists audio and video published before 23 September 2020 under the section of things you might not need to fix. We will make sure new video content is compliant in future.

6. What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are working towards making the website fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility guidelines.

The first assessment against accessibility guidelines was January 2021 with improvements identified and made by 2 September 2021.

Further improvements were made by February 2023.

7. Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 2 September 2021. It was last reviewed on 17 February 2023.

This website was last tested in February 2023. The test was carried out by the SSSC. All pages within the careers website were tested.

8. Additional information about this website’s accessibility

The following list provides extra details about what we have done to make the website accessible.

This website can be used in portrait or landscape orientation.
It will display well on a range of devices including mobile phones.
The only moving information which starts automatically is the video on the homepage and a pause button is available if you want to stop this.
All videos which appear on the website have optional subtitles.
All podcasts have a transcript.
The website does not rely on colour to communicate visual information which may require an action or response. For example the interactive qualification pathways use colour, icons, text and movement to help users explore the information.
Content will reflow when the site is zoomed up to 300% without spilling off the screen.
Content which is resized on a large scale is arranged in a single column. When resized there is no loss of information and the majority of images will also remain.
There is no loss of information or function when the text spacing is changed by the user, this includes line height, spaces following paragraphs, letter spacing, and word spacing.
The site can be navigated using a keyboard and no keyboard traps have been found which means the user should always be able to navigate both in and out of any spaces using a keyboard.
A high contrast keyboard focus is available.
User interface components such as buttons, navigation and accordions have a high contrast ratio. Aria labels or descriptive text is given for buttons or links. The website does not require the user to input any information into fields.
Pages are displayed in a logical order. The number of separate pages has been minimised by displaying content within them in a one-page longer format.
The simple navigation menu is consistent on each page apart from the career stories which contain a simple way to navigate back to the previous page or home page. There are also site links at the bottom of the website for each of the main pages.
A Skip to Main Content button is available to quickly get past the navigation menu which is repeated on each page.
Each web page has a title and meta data describing its purpose.
Headings are used throughout each page to guide the user to main topics.
Link purposes have been made clear by providing them in context and with text descriptions.
Most of the site can be listened to using a screen reader. We tested using Pericles: Text to Speech Screen Reader, Read Aloud: A Text to Speech Voice Reader and ChromeVox.
The website pages were tested with W3C Mark-up Validator Service in April 2021. No errors were found, with the exception of some divider elements not containing a header. These were judged not to be necessary.