Accessibility Statement

The Northern Ireland Assembly is always working to make this website accessible and easy to use for everyone, no matter what browser you use*, and whether or not you have any disabilities. For example, that means you should be able to:

change colours, contrast levels and fonts
zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
listen to most of the website using a screen reader

You may find the following links useful in adjusting the settings of the browser that you use to navigate our website more comfortably

* Please be aware that when navigating the KESS website, we recommend not using the Internet Explorer browser. As this browser now only receives minimal support and updates, much of the functionality of the site is not fully supported by this browser.

For further guidance on adapting your computer to your accessibility needs, visit AbilityNet. Their site shows you how to:

While we try to make the website text as simple as possible to understand, a substantial amount of content is provided by third party contributors to our Seminar Series and we have limited control over those submissions.

How accessible is the website?

This website was provided with a mini-redesign in January 2025, with a a focus on addressing the main accessibility barriers identified by manual checks and the results provided by the WAVE accessibility testing tool. Only a selection of the most popular pages and primary content was fully tested and remediated. There remains a number of pages that require further investigation. A focus was aimed on the most popular and most recent content.

Further testing and checks with automated tools is on the workplan for the future, and further improvements and design changes will be made based on the results of this audit.

We have endeavoured to make the website as accessible as possible however you may encounter sections that are not as easy to navigate as others are.

Some pages may have poor colour contrast.
There may be some issues tabbing through the website with your keyboard. If you experience any difficulty, please let us know and we will look to address the issue.
Some images may not contain Alt Text.
Video recordings of seminars are provided via embedded Youtube videos. This means that the video player controls are those native to Youtube – some users may experience issues with these controls. Learn more about Youtube’s accessibility features.
The captions provided in the videos are auto-generated by Youtube. Auto-generated captions are a great resource but will always contain inaccuracies.
We provide third party resources to support each presentation. These include PDFs and Powerpoint presentations provided by the thitd party – we cannot guarantee the accessibility of these documents.
We provide audio versions of presentations in the form of ‘podcasts’. These audio filese are hosted and embedded from SoundCloud. Some users may experience issues with the audio player. Also, written transcripts of the audio are not provided.

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format:

Email: raise@niassembly.gov.uk

We’ll consider your request and get back to you as soon as possible.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

Maintaining an accessible site is an ongoing process and the Assembly Web Team welcomes any feedback that will help us improve accessibility on the website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please email info@niassembly.gov.uk or call 028 9052 1137.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality Commission for Northern Ireland (ECNI) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Commission.

Visiting Parliament Buildings

If you would like to visit the building, please view our accessibility information to find out the arrangements and facilities that we offer.

You can also view our virtual tour. Our virtual tour videos come with subtitles and there are also British Sign Language and Irish Sign Language versions.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The Northern Ireland Assembly is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. However there is content that may prove difficult for people with assistive needs.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some of the images in our posts do not contain appropriate Alt Text. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.1.1 Non-text Content.

Most of the PDFs and other document formats on the site have not been tested and remediated for accessibility.

Navigation and accessing information

When navigating the website with a keyboard, it is possible to skip repeated content in the page header and links will be highlighted as you tab through them. We have also taken steps to avoid keyboard ‘traps’. Content should still be accessible whether viewed in horizontal or vertical orientation and no matter how large the text size.

If you have any difficulty in navigating the site or accessing content, please get in touch and we will consider the issue and provide the content in an alternative format where possible.

How we tested this website

This website, kess.org.uk, was redeveloped with improvements made following a basic audit in January 2025. A more complete audit is on the future workplan.

Elements and pages were tested with the WAVE accessibility testing tool. Care was taken to meet accessibility issues flagged by the automated tool and via other manual checks.

However the site was not tested with any assistive technologies and therefore there may be sections of the site which may prove difficult to access or navigate. If you do experience any of these issues, please get in touch.

This accessibility statement applies only to the kess.org.uk microsite and not our main website, niassembly.gov.uk, or any of our other microsites.

This statement was last updated on 29 January 2025.