How to develop the report to comply with the Accessibility Regulations (2018)?
The Annual Reporting Templates and Air Quality Action Plan Templates have been developed to comply with the Accessibility Regulations (2018). Instructions are provided throughout the template as a steer to ensuring that the completed report remains compliant with Accessibility Regulations, with the key points to adhere to summarised as follows:
- Make hyperlinks accessible – the text used for hyperlinks should describe where people will go if they click that link
- Follow the template heading styles – important to define the content hierarchy and use the correct heading style at the right time
- Avoid using ‘tab’ or ‘enter’ to create spaces between text/sections, utilise page/section breaks
- Text should be aligned to the left and not justified
Use the tables within the template. If any additional tables are required, ensure these are formatted correctly and a summary of the table is provided within the accompanying text. To add alt text, right click on a table and select Table Properties… then select the Alt Text tab. Insert a title and brief description of the table, e.g. Table 1 displays the site details of all monitoring sites located within AQMA 1. (N.B. alt text added to tables does not save if the document is converted to a pdf). Additionally:
- Ensure the top row is selected as the ‘header row’
- Avoid the use of merged or split cells
- The table should read logically from left to right and top to bottom. Press the “Tab” key to check the reading order of tables.
The presentation of trend charts, graphs and figures (including maps) should take account of readers who are colour blind, with suitable colour-blind friendly pallets chosen. The following colour combinations should be avoided:
- green/red
- green/brown
- blue/purple
- green/blue
- light green/yellow
- blue/grey
- green/grey
- green/black
- red/amber/green
The website ColorBrewer provides colour-blind safe information regarding palettes, and allows the definition of a 5-class palette that would be applicable to a trend chart with five years of monitoring data. For maps, it may be more suitable to display AQMAs through the use of hashing.
Add alt text to charts or pictures inserted within the report that do not have a corresponding summary written directly above or below the chart. To add alt text right click on an image and select Edit Alt Text… and insert a brief description of the chart, e.g. Figure 1 presents NO2 annual mean concentrations for sites DT1 to DT10 between years 2016 to 2020. There are no exceedances of the annual mean objective in 2020 and there is a general trend of reduction experienced across the sites.
If saving the document as a PDF it is recommended that the ‘Create bookmarks using’ option with the sub-option of ‘Headings’ is selected. Although not an explicit requirement in terms of accessibility, this will ensure your document is easy to read and navigate.
Defra’s Accessible documents policy provides further guidance on publishing accessible documents. If the AQAP is to be published on your authority website, it is recommended that the AQAP is checked by your content team to ensure compliance.
