Accessibility statement
Last reviewed: July 2026
Public participation only works if everyone can take part. Society Speaks is designed so that residents can read, vote and contribute regardless of device, connection, language or assistive technology.
Our standard
We work to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 level AA as our target standard across the platform, and we treat accessibility issues as bugs, not feature requests.
What we have built in
- Keyboard navigation throughout, including a skip-to-content link, visible focus states and keyboard-operable menus and forms
- Semantic HTML with labelled landmarks, headings and ARIA attributes for screen readers
- Colour contrast that meets AA on text and interactive elements, and information never conveyed by colour alone
- A responsive layout that works on small screens and low-cost devices — voting takes one tap
- No account required to participate, which removes the biggest barrier of all
- The interface is available in 11 languages
Known limitations
- Some data visualisations (for example opinion cluster charts) are inherently visual; we provide the underlying figures in text and tables wherever they appear
- A small number of older discussions use an embedded third-party tool (Pol.is) whose accessibility we do not control
- Some older pages have not yet been re-audited against WCAG 2.2 and may contain issues; we fix these as they are found
Feedback and contact
If you find something on Society Speaks that is difficult or impossible to use with your device or assistive technology, please tell us — it genuinely helps:
We aim to acknowledge accessibility reports within five working days and to prioritise fixes that block participation.
For public-sector clients
If your organisation is subject to the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018, we can support your compliance assessment for consultations run on Society Speaks, including embedded consultations on your own website. Ask us at [email protected].