Accessibility plan

Objective

To ensure all CSIRO websites are WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliant.

Scope

This applies to CSIRO’s internal and external websites.

Sites in scope

• CSIRO.au
• CSIRO Publishing
• CSIROpedia
• CSIRO Research Publications Repository
• BHP Billiton Science & Engineering Awards 
• Atlas of Living Australia 
• The Science and Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF) 
• MyCSIRO (intranet site)
• Blogs hosted by CSIRO including:
  • research.csiro.au
  • CSIROscope
  • Algorithm

Sites out of scope

• CSIRO's social media presence as these sites are out of CSIRO's control:
  • CSIRO Facebook 
  • Youtube 
  • Twitter 
  • LinkedIn 

Other external CSIRO websites  

CSIRO has a number of sites which remain online for information purposes only. These sites have been clearly marked as archives in accordance with the Australian Government National Transition Strategy.

Progress as of March 2015

• Created educational material for web authors.
• Ran accessibility sessions at the CSIRO Web Authors’ Workshop on 15 November 2012 and the CSIRO Communication Conference on 3-5 December 2012.
• Provided training for web authors at the Web Authors’ Workshop in June 2013 to include assurance of WCAG 2.0 AA compliance for all new videos.
• Engaged Vision Australia to provide PDF training to the Web Services Team (June 2013) and also sent several staff members to accessibility workshops run by Vision Australia.
• Provided regular accessibility information in the Web Authors Newsletter.
• Updated Microsoft Office templates to assist with the creation of more accessible PDFs.
• Identified existing audio and video files without transcripts and provided transcripts or removed outdated files.
• Organised a cost effective transcript and closed caption service.
• Added a link to accessibility information to the footer of all CSIRO.au web pages. The linked information includes a form for people to contact us if they need further assistance with any content.
• Added accessibility guideline compliance as part of the publishing workflow for all web page content.
• Began using a commercial video streaming service that has full WCAG 2.0 AA compliance for all new videos.
• Created and implemented a policy requiring the release of all new websites, documents, services and online applications to be WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliant.
• Redeveloped csiro.au to be WCAG 2.0 Level AA compliant and relaunched site in March 2015.

Progress as of January 2020

• Redeveloped the CSIRO wordpress blog theme to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA standards in 2015. Further accessibility improvements have been made in 2019.
• All newly developed websites and web based applications must comply with WCAG 2.0 Level AA standards. To ensure standards are met every web site/application is audited by the CSIRO web team prior to publication. All errors found in the audit must be addressed before the site is approved for publication.
• The MyCSIRO intranet site was redeveloped in 2017/2018 to meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA standards.

Future Accessibility Strategy

• Continue to carry out accessibility audits on sites that are still current but not accessible and assist the authors of these sites to create accessible content and fix identified accessibility issues.
• Continue to provide further author training as necessary.
• Investigate and begin implementing support for WCAG 2.1 across all websites listed as being in scope.

General accessibility assistance to visitors to our websites

While we have invested strongly in providing an authoring model that guides and trains our authors to provide best practice in accessibility, there may be occurrences where users have difficulty accessing information from our websites.

To assist with this, we have produced a page where website users can request assistance, and linked it from the footer of every CSIRO.au web page.

General notes

Search

In May 2019 we changed our search system to one with a front end developed in house, it complies with WCAG 2.0 Level AA standards.

Data visualisation

Many CSIRO websites include data visualisations. While every effort has been made to make these comply with WCAG 2.0 Level AA standards, in some instances, and given the nature of the data involved, this has not been possible. Where compliance has not been achieved CSIRO will provide text versions or raw data.

Scientific and Enterprise applications

Some scientific and enterprise applications utilise platforms and interfaces that can't achieve accessibility compliance, CSIRO strives to make these applications as compliant as possible and can provide assistance on a case by case basis to help users with accessibility needs to use the applications. Please contact us if you need assistance. 

Virtual tours

CSIRO provides several virtual tours of its sites and facilities, including the RV Investigator and CSIRO Energy Centre. Due to vendor limitations these tours are not accessible and do not meet WCAG 2.0 Level A standards. CSIRO has notified the vendor and requested a number of enhancements to the underlying software to improve compliance.