Symplectic Elements accessibility statement
This accessibility statement applies to the Symplectic Elements main application and Discovery Module. Ensuring that our website and interfaces are usable for as many of our visitors as possible is a key objective for Elements and Digital Science. We are actively committed to reaching and maintaining strong accessibility compliance standards.
As part of this, we endeavour to ensure all new features added to Elements conform with accessibility standards, and to assist with this, accessibility checks in line with WCAG 2.1 are already part of our development processes.
The Discovery Module became conformant with relevant WCAG AA standards* in Q4 2019 and we have since continued to routinely make accessibility improvements alongside development of the module to maintain this.
For the main Symplectic Elements application, we continue working proactively towards full conformance with WCAG 2.1 AA standards. We have embedded accessibility into each stage of our design, development and testing process and we work to ensure that all new development is as accessible as possible. However, as Elements is a large and complex system - comprising over 200 screens - which has been developed over more than 15 years, work remains to reach full conformance across the product as a whole, particularly in relation to some of the older parts of the system.
To ensure that we continually advance the accessibility of our product, we:
Have embedded accessibility design and testing across each stage of our development lifecycle to ensure we are actively monitoring for accessibility-related issues, including the use of assistive technology such as screenreaders.
Have created an internal accessibility steering group that meets each month. This cross-functional group seek to ensure we are continually improving our practices and growing knowledge about accessibility across the team Processes for reviewing and prioritising feedback from clients and external testing
Invest in ongoing training and development for the team
In addition to ensuring accessibility in new development (eg. as we add new pages or components or redesign existing ones), we also maintain an internal accessibility 'backlog', where we track and prioritise for development smaller accessibility-related improvements identified through testing and client feedback. If issues are identified through user testing or client audits, we welcome this feedback and will review the provided information to inform the prioritisation of future development work.
Detailed information about the current conformance status against the WCAG 2.1 standard is available in our VPAT. It is reviewed annually.
If you have any questions or would like a copy of our VPAT, please contact us on support@symplectic.co.uk or create a new support ticket.
*Please note: There is one success criterion in the WCAG2.1 AA standard which the Discovery Module only 'partially supports', Success Criterion 1.4.10: Reflow due to a number of known exceptions. We have planned a set of development to rectify this in upcoming releases. To the best of our knowledge, the rest of the Discovery Module is in full conformance with all other success criterion for the WCAG 2.1 AA standard and we look forward to resolving this issue soon.