BBC accessibility standards and guidelines

When websites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to the sites' information, functionality and benefits.

BBC Online aims to make our websites accessible and usable for people of all abilities and disabilities, including older audiences, and those with visual, hearing, cognitive or motor impairments.

Many people use assistive technologies to allow them, for example, to view websites in easier-to-read colours, with larger fonts or as spoken text, or to navigate around a site using the keyboard only.

As these assistive technologies become more available and sophisticated, the BBC wants to ensure that our websites continue to work well with them to deliver a good experience for all our users.

To help us to achieve these aims, BBC Future Media and Technology (FM&T) publishes the Web Accessibility Standards and Guidelines, which should be followed by anyone who is commissioning, developing, designing or editing websites for BBC Online. It comprises two parts:

• The accessibility standards specify the factors that BBC web teams should or must consider when using design elements or features such as movement, Flash and multimedia, keyboard access, images and colour.
• The accessibility guidelines provide recommendations and supporting information. Topics in the guidelines include Screenreader testing, Flicker and Self-voicing.

The BBC works with the wider accessibility community to support the future development of operating system, web browser and specialist assistive technologies, and the standards that allow all websites to be created to work best with these.

In instances where the specific accessibility needs of some disabled user groups require BBC Online to create new or repurposed editorial content, we will do this, wherever appropriate, so that we become more inclusive to a wider audience online.

For more information, please contact the Accessibility Team.