Accessibility

Accessibility statement

The Toitū Te Whenua website is designed to be as accessible as possible so that everyone can access the information we publish and easily interact with us.

Accessibility helps people with permanent disabilities as well as people with situational disabilities. For example, a clear font, good colour contrast and design that works well when a user magnifies a page will help people with a permanent vision disability, as well as someone trying to read our website on a cellphone in bright sunlight.

Toitū Te Whenua has signed the Accessibility Charter. This means we have committed to providing accessible information to the public and focusing on accessibility in all our work.

We also aim to meet the New Zealand Government Web Accessibility Standard.

This means that we will do our best to:

• meet the New Zealand Government Web Standards
• fix problems that prevent our websites meeting these standards
• publish all our content in a range of accessible formats where we have the means to do so
• work with vendors who understand and strive to comply with accessibility standards and requirements.

Conformance status

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) explain what good web accessibility looks like. This website meets many of the WCAG 2.1 Level AA requirements, but not all of them.

We aim to meet Level AA in all of our websites and are fixing the accessibility issues that we have found.

After reviewing the site a Statement of Conformance was issued by Intopia in June 2023

Content that is not accessible

We know that our websites have some accessibility issues.

Site-wide issues

• Some elements in te reo Māori do not have language tags.
• The alt text or long description of images may not meet expectations, particularly on older pages.
• Keyboard focus indicators and some text may be hard to see on some backgrounds.
• ‘On this page’ links may not move focus to the chosen section of content.
• PDFs, particularly older files, may have issues like a lack of navigation and not being compatible with screen readers.
• Technical content may be difficult to understand.

Responsive view and high zoom settings

• When navigating with a keyboard, users may find that focus is not trapped within the site menu.
• In the responsive view’s header, the search field relies on placeholder text for its visible label. 
• Some images may be difficult to read and some text may be truncated.

Forms

• In forms, some labels or error messages may not be associated with the fields they refer to.
• For screen reader users, when forms are submitted:
  • focus may not be managed on the new page
  • the submission confirmation message may not be announced.

Maps

• In some interactive maps, radio buttons may not be grouped as expected.
• Screen reader users may experience issues with some of our interactive maps. For example on the tide predictions map:
  • activating a map marker stops the download map pop-ups managing focus
  • activating the layers button moves focus to the top of the page.

Overseas investment and Crown pastoral land decisions

On the overseas investment and Crown pastoral land decisions search pages:

• screen reader users may find that activating the pagination links, search button or show all button moves focus to the top of the page
• some text that acts as a heading for sighted users is not marked up as a heading in code
• the loading status is not announced by the screen reader when the user activates a pagination link, the search button or the show all button. 

News

On the News landing page, screen reader users may find that:

• toggling between list and gallery view moves focus to the top of the page
• the number of search results is not announced. 

Search

On the Search page, screen reader users may find:

• activating a filter or search term moves the focus to the top of the page
• each keystroke to navigate within the filters force scrolls to the top of the page
• the loading indicator and the number of results are not announced. 

Compatibility with browsers and assistive technologies

Aside from the issues mentioned above, this website should work with all modern web browsers and assistive technologies, such as:

• Microsoft Edge, including the read aloud feature
• Apple Safari, including VoiceOver
• Google Chrome, including TalkBack
• JAWS
• NVDA.

Parts of the website may not work properly on older versions of web browsers.

Feedback and requests for alternative formats

Let us know if you find accessibility issues on this website. This includes functionality or tools that are difficult to use, navigation problems, or content that is hard to understand.

Please contact us if you need anything from our website in a different format.

We try to respond to feedback within 3 business days.

Email us at digitalcommunications@linz.govt.nz

Assessment approach

We focused on accessibility while developing this website – but as you can see from the above issues we have identified, this work is not finished yet. We check the accessibility of our websites by:

• evaluating selected pages against WCAG 2.1 Level AA
• regular health checks using automated accessibility checkers
• testing selected pages with assistive technologies.

Approver of this statement

This accessibility statement is approved by the Team Manager, Digital Communications, Toitū Te Whenua Land Information New Zealand. To contact the Digital Communications team email us at digitalcommunications@linz.govt.nz