Accessibility on Client Systems

We are committed to providing an accessible interface both for candidates and client users of our systems.

We are approaching accessibility in two ways: standards based compliance and real world accessibility.

Standards Based Compliance

For our SHL Online system we are working toward compliance with WCAG V2 AA standard as well as Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act. There is significant overlap between the two standards and, having taken independent expert advice we are confident that these standards effectively provide compliance with other global requirements or standards.

Real World Accessibility

We are ensuring that our services can be used in practice by people with a variety of disabilities and that we have tested our solutions in these scenarios.  Adding this element to our approach to accessibility ensures the practicalities of using assistive technologies, or implementation of other adjustments which may be required, preserve the integrity of our assessments while still being usable by candidates.

It is important to note that not all of our assessments lend themselves to the use of all assistive technologies or adjustments, today or in the future. For example where the measurement of a core construct of an assessment would be compromised, we will not support it.  An example that our third party expert used was that he, as a blind person, cannot take a driving test; and that is entirely reasonable and not discriminatory. While an extreme example, it illustrates the point well.

We have specified the assistive technologies we are working to support across both the candidate and the administrator sides of SHL Online. This covers the mainstream screen readers, voice control software and screen magnification technologies, as well as common inbuilt accessibility support on some operating systems.

We are making changes to our online platform to support accessibility for our candidates and clients.

Candidate Accessibility

• All images will have alternative descriptions accessible by screen readers.
• Improved information and relationships such as page titles, page headings, table headers and form labels will be used on all pages.
• Improved keyboard-only navigation to quickly access buttons, forms and combo boxes using keys rather than the mouse.
• Adding bypass links, which are useful not only for screen reader users, but all keyboard-only users. Bypass navigation or ‘skip to’ links eliminate the need for excessive, time consuming tabbing and allow keyboard users quick access to important areas on a page.
• Adding the default language of all pages.
• Add warning to pages where there are links that open in a new window to let the user know what to expect and informing the screen reader user to expect a new window to open or a standard alert dialog box to appear.
• Improved error handling, making sure errors are easily accessible by a screen reader user. The user should not need to find and navigate to a specific field before they realise that there is an error.
• Improve contrast and text size options to support users with visual impairment.
• Replacing Adobe Flash as the main test player for our tests, allowing these tests to become accessible to screen readers on SHL Online.
• Providing support for the most commonly used screen readers, voice control software and screen magnification tools.
• Adding alternative contrast views to support high contrast or low graphical content pages.

Administrator User Accessibility

• All images will have alternative descriptions accessible by screen readers
• Improved use of colour; no information or links on a page will be differentiated by colour alone.
• Improved contrast on pages to support users with visual impairments.
• Improved keyboard only navigation to quickly access buttons and dialog boxes using keys rather than the mouse.
• All electronic forms will have labelled form controls.
• Improved error handling, making sure errors are easily accessible by a screen reader user. The user should not need to find and navigate to a specific field before they realise that there is an error.
• Providing support for the most commonly used screen readers, voice control software and screen magnification tools.

We continue to engage with our third party expert organisation and they are supplying advice and testing support.