NATIONAL INVENTORY OF ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE (NIAH) WEBSITE

The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is the Government Department responsible for housing and water, for physical and spatial planning, for local government, for weather forecasting and for built and natural heritage.

The Department is committed to ensuring access for all. This accessibility statement explains how the Department, as the Service Provider, will endeavour to meet the requirements as set out in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2.1 at AA Level as defined by the Web Accessibility Initiative.

Our commitment and approach to maintaining an accessible website

The Department is committed to:

  • maintaining an accessible website in accordance with S.I. 258/2020.
  • ensuring that this website achieves “Level AA” conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1, to comply with the National Disability Authority’s Code of Practice on Accessibility of Public Services and Information Provided by Public Bodies. (The National Disability Authority’s Centre for Excellence in Universal Design has an introduction to policy and legislation relevant to Universal Design in Ireland.)
  • ensuring that all new information on the website will achieve “Level AA” conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.
  • including accessibility when we procure 3rd-party systems or upgrades to existing systems.

How we test for conformance with official accessibility guidelines

The Department uses a range of techniques to help providing access for all.  They include:

Accessibility Testing
Approach Reasoning
Automated Scanning Automated scanning provides a quick (but not complete) overview of issues that persons may encounter
Guidance Provision of guidance to content editors such as using Alternate Text
Manual Review Regularly performing manual review of each site and adjusting the site to help improve accessibility

This website’s conformance with official accessibility guidelines

The website currently has a partial conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)
2.1. Our most recent web accessibility audit for this website was on 27/09/2021.

Areas for improvement and time-lines

We are aware of some areas on the website where we could improve accessibility. We are currently working to achieve this. We hope that this website will achieve “Level AA” conformance to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 by December 2021.

Areas for improvement, time-lines for improvement, and alternatives
Section of website Need for improvement Time-line for improvement Alternative access
Imagery Some Missing alt tags / Incorrect descriptions within Theme / Image Links labelled as “Link: Untitled Graphic” This issue has been reported to our developer and should be fixed shortly If you have problems using certain sections of this site, call us on +353 (0) 1 888 32 00
Map Places to Visit Map makes no contextual sense to screen readers This issue has been reported to our developer and should be fixed shortly If you have problems using certain sections of this site, call us on +353 (0) 1 888 32 00
All PDFs PDF Preview Images under test say “Link” and not a description of the “Link” This issue has been reported to our developer and should be fixed shortly If you have problems using certain sections of this site, call us on +353 (0) 1 888 32 00
PDF Embed PDF Embed is not accessible as the object is rendered as an image and not textual information This issue has been reported to our developer and should be fixed shortly If you have problems using certain sections of this site, call us on +353 (0) 1 888 32 00

How to send feedback on this website’s accessibility

We welcome feedback on the accessibility of this website.

National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Custom House
Dublin D01 W6X0
Ireland

Accessibility features of this website

A large number of techniques are used to enable the site become accessible for all.  The process is ongoing as content changes and the structure of the site changes.  Some of the accessible features on this site include (but not limited to) the following:

Accessibility Features
Feature Purpose
Alt Text All Images where appropriate have suitable Alt text to provide a descriptive element to the image portrayed
Heading Outline Hierarchy Logical sense applied to headings where possible H1, H2, H3 or H1, H3
Descriptive Links Links and Buttons have descriptive elements or Aria labels where those elements are cannot be provided
Contrast Reasonable minimums in difference with relation to contrast between foreground elements and background elements
Navigability Logical structure applied to the website to ensure the site can be used without a mouse
ARIA Landmarks A large variety of aria- landmarks applied to aid in accessibility

This list is not exhaustive.