Our Goal

The Department of Social Protection (DSP) is committed to making the information on WelfarePartners.ie accessible to all, regardless of ability. In order to achieve this we have designed our website to follow guidelines set out by the W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). The W3C WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) produces accessibility guidelines that are an internationally recognised benchmark of accessibility. We aim to comply with Level Double-A of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0.

Benefits of Accessibility

The benefits of this include:

• The site is designed to be easy to navigate. There are many ways to find the information you are looking for.
• The site supports both old and new technology. If your browser or browsing device does not support Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), the information on each page is still readable.
• You can change font size easily using your browser. (Please refer to your browser's Help menu to learn how to re-size text)
• We have provided a high-contrast version of the site for people with certain visual impairments. This can be accessed at the top of the page.
• There are 'skip links' for people using JAWS, or using a keyboard. These will bypass site navigation and bring you straight to the content. Furthermore, all pages will validate as HTML5 and CSS3 ensuring that they work with a wide variety of browsers.

Known Issues

While we have attempted to address all accessibility issues with WelfarePartners.ie, there are a number of known issues. These are:

• Tables

We have attempted to make tables containing data on this site easy to read using screen readers. However, there are still some complex data tables which certain users may have difficulty accessing and we are working to make these tables more accessible.

• Accessibility contact

We will continue to monitor and improve the accessibility of this site. We will also closely monitor developments and changes in accessibility guidelines and general website best practice.