Website accessibility statement
In building and maintaining this website we have paid close attention to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, while designing the website and preparing the content.
Web accessibility statements can themselves often be difficult to understand, but we have attempted here to explain how we have approached making this website accessible, aiming at standards above those strictly required. Our aim is to achieve the AA standard with only a few exceptions, our approach to which we have explained below.
If you’re planning a visit in person, you can also read about accessibility at Japan House London.
What we have done to make this website accessible
- Made sure content is structured logically and can be navigated and read by a screen reader
- Used text colours that show up clearly against the background colour
- Made sure every feature can be used when text size is increased by 200% and that content reflows to a single column when it’s increased by 400%
- Avoided text presented as an image wherever possible; when a graphic does include text this will never be the only way to read that text in relation to that image – the information will also be presented digitally in text that is accessible
- Made sure everything works for keyboard-only users
- Used meaningful headings and labels, making sure that any accessible labels match or closely resemble the label users are using in the interface
- Made it clear what language the content is written in, and indicated when this changes
- Made sure features look consistent and behave in predictable ways
- Made sure all form fields have visible and meaningful labels
- Make sure important status messages or modal dialogs are marked up in a way that informs users of their presence and purpose, and lets them interact with them using their assistive technology
What we’re working on
- Providing text alternatives (‘alt text’) for non-text content. This should be in place for all web pages created since December 2023, but may be missing for older pages.
- Enabling users to play, pause and stop any moving content
- Providing captions for video. All Japanese-language videos, and English-language videos made from December 2023 onwards, have captions but older English-language videos will not always have captions.
- Avoiding using PDFs in place of live text. Sometimes this is unavoidable, but where not we are looking to move to live HTML in place of PDF.
- Using descriptive links so users know where a link will take them, or what downloadable linked content is. We are working on this for all new pages created since December 2023.
What we are unable to do
- Provide transcripts for audio and video. Unfortunately we don’t have the capacity to do this task, but our aim is that a combination of the audio element of videos and subtitles will enable most people with specific needs to access our video content. We do not currently offer audio content, but if we develop this in future then we will provide transcripts.
Contact us
If you have any questions or suggestions on how to make this website more accessible, please contact us using the form on the Contact Us page.