Accessibility

Accessibility

Accessibility statement for Salix Finance Ltd

This statement was prepared on 6 March 2023. It was last updated on 13 June 2023. 

This statement applies to content published on our website. 

Measures to support accessibility 

This website is run by Salix Finance Ltd. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. This means, as a public body, we are required to comply with The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (which came into general force on 23 September 2018) to ensure that users with disabilities can access our digital services. We take the following measures to ensure the accessibility of the Salix website: 

  • Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • Make use of screen readers 
  • Listen to most of our website using a screen reader
  • Read text with good colour contrast
  • View images and multimedia - including videos, animations and audio 
  • We've also made the website text as simple as possible to understand. 

There are some changes you can make to your computer to make any website, including ours, easier to see and use on your computer, mobile phone, or tablet.  We have listed some useful resource below to help you do this. You can find advice on making your device easier to use on the AbilityNet website.

This unique resource explains all the accessibility features available in popular desktop computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones, including Windows, Mac OSX, iOS, Android and Windows Phone. All of these devices have features that enable people to adapt their computer to suit their needs, such as changing the colours and text size or using voice activation.

Structure of the site 

We have one set of pages for the whole site, which we aim to make accessible to all. We do not separate accessible and less accessible pages into separate sections. 

Why is there no button to make text larger? 

Browser technology has moved on significantly, enabling easy page zoom with shortcuts that should be listed in the ‘View’ menu of the browser. Page zoom has the benefit that each element of the page will be scaled proportionately. It is also more common for people with visual impairments to have their own software built-in, which automatically increases the text size. 

Use of cookies 

Like most websites, we use cookies. Every user is informed about how the site uses cookies on their first visit. For more information see our cookies policy. 

Use of multimedia 

We aim to label all images and use images just where appropriate (not for purely decorative text and headings). Text will be scalable, as will all pages themselves. We set a maximum size for most pages, to ensure lines are wrapped according to commonly accepted typographical rules. 

Browser support 

There will always be small differences in the display between browsers, but we do aim to broadly support: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge 

Conformance status 

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. Salix website is partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA. Partially conformant means that some parts of the content do not fully conform to the accessibility standard. The section on “Encountering issues” below addresses areas where we are not yet compliant.

Technical specifications 

Accessibility of Salix website relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer: 

  • HTML 
  • WAI-ARIA 
  • CSS 
  • JavaScript 

These technologies are relied upon for conformance with the accessibility standards used. 

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are committed to the continual improvement of the accessibility of our website. We achieve this by doing the following:

  • Training for staff on how to create accessible pages and documents
  • Perform regular accessibility audits
  • Speaking with our clients and key partners and incorporate their feedback to improve our services
  • Keep up with the latest best practices and evolving standards

Encountering issues 

Despite our best efforts to ensure accessibility of the Salix website, as some content does not yet comply fully with WCAG guidelines, there may be some limitations. Although guidelines offer some scope for interpretation, we are constantly looking to improve accessibility. In this section, we address known limitations and the actions we are taking in mitigation while we work towards full compliance with appropriate standards. We welcome feedback from our users to help us make navigating our website as easy as possible. 

Current known limitations in respect of website accessibility

Documents: some of our PDFs and office documents are essential to providing our services. When uploaded to our website may not have been formatted to be accessible.  We are addressing this by raising awareness of the Microsoft Accessibility Checker. Any new PDFs or word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Images: Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. We plan to add text alternatives for all images and when we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Multimedia: Some of our older videos, published before 23 September 2020, may not feature captions. Any new videos we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Many of our videos are embedded from YouTube and may feature labelling from YouTube itself, which is incorrect or not sufficiently descriptive. This is third-party content, which we do not pay for, develop or control, so the accessibility regulations do not apply.

You can visit our YouTube channel to see more of our videos.

Useful links

If you need more information about general accessibility or using the web and your computer, we have provided some useful links to help:

Feedback and contact information

We welcome your feedback so that we can continue to improve our website, and help with any difficulties you may encounter. If you do find any problems that we have not listed on this web page or think we are not meeting certain accessibility requirements, please contact us 

  • Phone: 020 4542 6439 
  • Email: [email protected] 
  • 10 South Colonnade, Canary Wharf, London, E14 4PU