Accessibility
Accessibility statement
Most people using this directory are making an important housing decision, often later in life or on behalf of someone else. It should be readable, predictable and usable however you browse.
How this site is designed
- Readable text
- Body text starts at 17px, with essential text and controls kept at 16px or larger. Text reflows without a horizontal scrollbar down to a 320px screen, and stays usable at 200% browser zoom.
- Keyboard navigation
- Every control can be reached and operated with a keyboard, focus is visible as you go, and a “Skip to content” link is the first thing you reach on each page. Menus and search suggestions can be opened, reviewed and closed without a mouse.
- Structure and screen readers
- Pages use one main heading and a logical heading order, real landmarks, and real links and buttons rather than styled shapes. Search result counts and status messages are announced politely rather than stealing focus.
- Clear labels, not colour alone
- Form fields have visible labels rather than placeholder-only hints, and states such as the current page or an unavailable letter in the glossary are conveyed in text, not by colour alone.
- Motion and printing
- Nothing moves automatically, autoplays, or requires motion to be understood, and animation is reduced when your device asks for reduced motion. Pages print without navigation and interactive controls.
- Honest information
- Where a fact about a property is unknown we say so rather than guessing, and we show where information came from and when it was last updated.
The standard we work to
This site is designed to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at Level AA. We have not yet had an independent audit against that standard, so we describe this as our design target rather than a certified result. When an audit is completed, this page will say what was tested, when, and what was found.
What is not perfect yet
- The site has not yet had a full independent accessibility audit, so this statement describes how it is designed rather than an audited result.
- Some migrated articles and glossary entries came from the previous website and may still have imperfect heading structure or wording.
- Listing photographs come from our data sources, so their descriptions can be limited.
- We do not provide an on-page text-size or high-contrast control. Your browser and device settings do this, and the site is built to respect them.
Making the site easier to read
Make the text bigger
Hold Ctrl (or Cmd on a Mac) and press + to zoom in, or change the default text size in your browser or device settings. The site is built to reflow rather than clip when you do.
Screen readers and contrast
The site works with the screen reader built into your device, and follows your system settings for reduced motion and contrast. You do not need to install anything or turn on a special mode here.
Tell us about a problem
If something on this site is hard to read, hard to use, or does not work with the tools you rely on, please tell us. Describing the page and what happened helps us fix it faster.