Accessibility statement
This statement is about the D’Ukes website. We want as many people as possible to be able to find a gig, read the blog and get in touch — whatever device you use and however you use it.
How accessible this website is
We have built the site so that you should be able to:
- get around every page with a keyboard alone, with a clear outline showing where you are
- zoom in to 400%, or read the site on a narrow phone screen, without text running off the side
- increase the space between letters, words and lines without anything overlapping
- use the site in your operating system’s dark or light setting, or override it with the button at the top of every page
- use a screen reader, with every image described and every form field labelled
- read dates, times and prices as text, never as a picture of text
We have also kept to a few rules throughout:
- text sits on a solid panel, never over a photograph, so it always has enough contrast
- nothing depends on colour alone — a cancelled gig says “cancelled”, it is not just red
- buttons and menu links are at least 44 pixels tall, and the smaller text links are spaced far enough apart that an unsteady hand cannot easily hit the wrong one
- the “Book us” link is in the same place on every page
- nothing pops up on its own, nothing flashes or loops, and no video or sound starts until you press play
- what movement there is follows you rather than interrupting you: things ease into place as you scroll down to them, and the photograph on the front page settles once when the page loads and then stops. If you have asked your device or browser for reduced motion you get none of it — the site is built without the movement rather than with it and then switched off
- the booking form never asks you for the same thing twice, and if it finds a problem it lists it at the top with a link to the field
- every page works with JavaScript switched off, the booking form included
What we know is not right yet
- We have not tested the site with a screen reader. A hands-on pass with a keyboard, at 400% zoom, at phone width and with the letter and line spacing turned up was done on , and what it found has been fixed. No screen-reader test is scheduled. If one is done, this page will be updated with what it finds.
- We have not been able to check Windows High Contrast mode. The site is built to work in it — nothing here depends on a colour or a background image — but nobody working on the site has a Windows machine, so that is reasoning rather than testing.
- Nobody who uses assistive technology every day has tried this site. Everything above is a careful sighted person checking their own work, which is not the same thing and never will be. If you use a screen reader, a switch, voice control, magnification or anything else, and something here does not work, please tell us. That is worth more to us than the rest of this page put together, and we will fix what you find.
- Videos are hosted on YouTube. Whether a video has captions is up to whoever uploaded it, and some films of the band were made and posted by other people, so we cannot add captions to those ourselves. Nothing is loaded from YouTube until you press play; once you do, the player is Google’s and its accessibility is not in our hands. Where we know a video has no captions, the page says so under it — before you press play rather than after.
- Most of our recordings have no written words alongside them. Every recording on the Listen page carries its name and a line saying what it is, and a few have notes about the performance, but there is no full written version of what you would hear. We are working out what we can usefully add — the songs are other people’s, so printing their words is not ours to do.
- Some recordings are hosted on SoundCloud. Nothing is loaded from SoundCloud until you press play, and there is a plain link beside every one that takes you straight to the track — but once the player opens it is SoundCloud’s, and its accessibility is not in our hands either.
Tell us if you cannot use something
If any part of this site stops you doing what you came to do, please tell us. It is useful to know what you were trying to do, what happened, and what you were using — but tell us however much or little you like.
If you need something on this site in another format — large print, plain text, or read aloud — ask and we will do our best to send it.
Send us a message. We are a band rather than an organisation with an office, so please allow a week or so for a reply.
If you are not happy with our response
D’Ukes is not a public body, so the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 do not apply to this site. We have followed the format they ask for because it is a clear one.
The Equality Act 2010 does apply to us. If you think we are falling short of it and we have not put things right, you can contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service.
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
D’Ukes is committed to making this website accessible, in line with the Equality Act 2010.
Conformance status
This website is partially conformant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 level AA. “Partially conformant” means most of the standard is met, but some of it has not yet been tested thoroughly enough for us to claim more — see “What we know is not right yet” above. We are aiming for full conformance and will say so here when we are confident of it.
What we are doing to improve accessibility
- Every change to the site is checked automatically before it can go live: four tools test every page for accessibility problems, invalid HTML and colour contrast, and a change that fails any of them is not published.
- Colour contrast is calculated from the design itself, so a colour cannot be changed to something unreadable without the checks failing.
- A manual pass with a keyboard and at 400% zoom has been done, and is described below. Testing with screen readers and in high-contrast mode has not been done and is not scheduled.
- We are checking captions on the videos we control, and adding a written description alongside any video we cannot caption.
How we tested this website
Every page is tested automatically each time the site changes, using axe-core, HTML_CodeSniffer (through pa11y), an HTML validator, and Lighthouse’s accessibility audit. Pages are also loaded at 320 pixels wide to check that nothing needs sideways scrolling.
On every page was also gone through by hand: the whole site was used with a keyboard alone, including sending an enquiry and getting it wrong first; every page was checked at 200% and 400% zoom and at 320 pixels wide; the spacing between letters, words and lines was turned up to the amounts the standard asks for; and every page was looked at in greyscale to make sure nothing is explained by colour alone. Testing is carried out by the person who built the site.
This statement was prepared on . It was last reviewed on .