Accessibility Statement

For playnorthwestcic.com · Last reviewed: October 2026

Play Northwest CIC is committed to making our website as accessible as possible to everyone — including people who use assistive technology, people with visual, hearing, motor or cognitive differences, and people who simply prefer larger text or audio reading.

How accessible the website aims to be

Our target is to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard across the public pages of playnorthwestcic.com.

What we’ve done so far

A built-in “Read this page aloud” button sits in the bottom-left corner of every page. It uses your device’s own voice (no audio data leaves your device) with adjustable speed, pause and resume.
Keyboard navigation is supported throughout. Interactive elements have visible focus styles.
Screen-reader support — pages have semantic HTML, descriptive headings, and ARIA labels on icon-only buttons (e.g. the read-aloud control, store badges, navigation menu).
Mobile responsive — the site reflows for phones, tablets and desktops.
Reduced-motion support — animations are disabled if your device is set to “prefer reduced motion”.
Colour contrast — every text colour meets the WCAG AA contrast ratio (4.5:1, or 3:1 for large text). We darkened two brand shades in October 2026 after testing showed they fell short.
Plain English — we deliberately keep language simple. We avoid jargon where we can.
Image alt-text — meaningful images have descriptive alt-text; decorative images are marked as such.
No autoplay audio or video — the read-aloud feature only plays when you press play.
No tracking cookies — we don’t run advertising or analytics trackers that could affect screen-reader behaviour or privacy. See our Privacy Policy.

How we tested

In October 2026 we tested 15 key pages, on desktop and mobile, with axe-core — the automated checker used by accessibility auditors — against WCAG 2.2 AA. After we fixed colour contrast, link styling, keyboard access to our photo galleries and the booking calendar, it found no failures.

Automated testing can’t catch everything. We haven’t yet had the site tested by disabled people using assistive technology — that’s our next step, and we’d welcome your feedback in the meantime.

Known limitations

We’re honest about where we’re still working. Current known limitations:

PDF downloads (our safeguarding policy and info pack) are produced with tags and headings for screen readers, but haven’t yet been checked with assistive technology. If you need any PDF’s content read aloud or shared in a different format, please contact us and we’ll send it to you in your preferred format within 5 working days.
The booking calendar on /book/ was rebuilt in October 2026 so each date is announced in full and screen readers can tell which one is selected. If you’d still prefer to book by email, write to bookings@playnorthwestcic.com and we’ll arrange a slot directly.
The session video on our News page doesn’t have captions. If you’d like a description of it, contact us.
The read-aloud voice quality depends on your device. Apple devices (Siri voice “Daniel” or “Kate” for UK English) typically sound most natural; Windows / Android voices vary.

How to report an accessibility barrier

If you find a part of our website hard to use, please tell us. We treat every accessibility report seriously and respond within 5 working days.

Email: hello@playnorthwestcic.com — please put “Accessibility” at the start of the subject line so we route it quickly.

Tell us, if you can:

The page or area of the site you were trying to use
The device, browser or assistive technology you were using
What happened (or didn’t happen) that you’d like us to fix

Enforcement

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. Although Play Northwest CIC is not a public sector body, we choose to hold ourselves to those standards. If you are unhappy with how we respond to an accessibility complaint, you can also raise it via our standard Complaints Policy.

Technical information

The website is built as a Next.js static export, served via Amazon CloudFront. We aim for WCAG 2.2 AA compliance. Where possible we use native HTML elements (buttons, links, headings, form inputs) rather than custom widgets, because native elements inherit accessibility support from the browser.

Connect & Support UK app

Our mobile app, Connect & Support UK, has its own dedicated accessibility page inside the app and follows a WCAG 2.1 AA target. The app deliberately uses low-sensory design (no flashing, no autoplay, no surprise sounds) appropriate to its crisis-support context.

This statement

This accessibility statement was last reviewed in October 2026 and is reviewed at least annually. Substantive changes to the website’s accessibility posture trigger an immediate update.

Play North West CIC · Community Interest Company · Registered in England & Wales · Company No. 15796794