Accessibility statement

Parliament of Victoria takes the following measures to ensure accessibility of Parliament of Victoria website:

• develop the website to the current web accessibility standards and best practice
• implement relevant actions in our Disability Action and Inclusion Plan
• seek feedback from a website user research panel
• recruit and train staff on best practice for web content.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA. 

Parliament of Victoria website in the process of development and aiming to achieve WCAG 2.1 level AA. 

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of Parliament of Victoria website. Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers on Parliament of Victoria website via e-mail web@parliament.vic.gov.au.

Parliament of Victoria website is designed to be compatible with the latest two versions of following browsers:

• Chrome
• Edge
• Firefox
• Safari.

Parliament of Victoria website is not compatible with:

• Internet Explorer
• browsers older than the latest two versions of those listed above.

Accessibility of Parliament of Victoria website relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:

• HTML
• WAI-ARIA
• CSS
• JavaScript.

These technologies are relied upon for conformance with the accessibility standards used.

Despite our best efforts to ensure accessibility of Parliament of Victoria website, there may be some limitations. Below is a description of known limitations, and potential solutions. Please contact us if you observe an issue not listed below.

Known limitations for Parliament of Victoria website:

1. Live captions: Our live broadcasts do not currently provide live captioning. We are currently limited in our technology to offer live captions. Users who are unable to view a live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings may read a progressive transcript of debates offered via Hansard.
2. Documents supplied by third parties: Some submissions made to inquiries, tabled documents and reports are provided by a third party. These documents are published as presented to us, and we have no control over the format and accessibility of these documents. For alternative formats of tabled documents supplied to Parliament, please contact the agency that produced that report. Please contact the relevant committee if you require access to a submission in a different format.
3. Historical documents: Some historical documents are provided in PDF format and may present accessibility issues. This is because PDFs were generated from scans of original, historical hard copies. We have applied optical character recognition on some of this content to help search and reading. Contact us if you require a historical document in a different format.
4. Links to old Parliament website: Some content is presented in the old Parliament of Victoria website, which had a different conformance to accessibility standards (WCAG 1.0 A level). Content and information from the old Parliament of Victoria website will be progressively migrated to the new website. Check the new website first. If the information you are looking for is not available, contact us for an alternative format.
5. Captions in older videos: Some videos produced by Parliament of Victoria prior to 2022 may not include captions. Videos are being refreshed progressively with regard to new accessibility standards. Question time videos may not include captions, and transcripts for the relevant day can be accessed via Hansard. Please contact us if you require a transcript or alternative format.
6. Members seating chart: The seating charts on member profiles are drawn from a legacy system, which conforms to a prior WCAG standard. We are working on redesigning these charts to ensure compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA.

Parliament of Victoria assessed the accessibility of Parliament of Victoria website by commissioning an external evaluation. Vision Australia audited the website for accessibility at two points during the development. Its final conformance report is due to be completed in 2022.

This Accessibility Statement is approved by the Chief Information Officer, Parliament of Victoria.

This statement was created in April 2022 using the W3C Accessibility Statement Generator Tool.