Accessible Gardens and Services in Shortlands

Gardening Shortlands is committed to ensuring that our services, events and information about Shortlands gardening are accessible to everyone. This accessibility statement explains how our commitment supports people with a range of needs, including people who use assistive technologies. We aim to make gardens in Shortlands and our online resources usable, understandable and inclusive for residents and visitors.

Our accessibility efforts align with WCAG 2.1 AA standards. We use semantic HTML, clear structure, and maintain high contrast for text and interactive elements. We conduct regular reviews and updates to sustain conformance with accessibility guidelines for the Shortlands garden community. Accessibility is an ongoing priority and we document improvements and planned work to maintain a consistently inclusive experience.

We design our pages and garden-related content for compatibility with screen readers and other assistive technologies. This includes logical headings, ARIA landmarks where needed, and properly ordered content so screen-reader users exploring Shortlands garden information can navigate efficiently. We also ensure that downloadable files include accessible alternatives or summaries where possible.

How we support keyboard and assistive navigation

For visitors who cannot use a mouse, our site and our on-site information kiosks are operable by keyboard alone. We provide clearly visible focus indicators and ensure tab order follows a meaningful sequence. When we describe physical Shortlands garden routes or services online we include keyboard-friendly maps and clear instructions so keyboard and switch device users can plan their visit.

We implement several accessibility features specifically for Shortlands gardening content, including:

• Skip links to jump to main content and navigation
• Fully accessible forms for volunteer sign-ups and event registration
• Keyboard operability for interactive maps of gardens in Shortlands
• Consistent page structure so assistive tech users can predict navigation

We also support common screen readers and test with popular tools to improve usability across devices and browsers familiar to Shortlands gardeners and visitors.

We make images and media about Shortlands garden projects accessible through descriptive captions and text equivalents where practical. Where we publish videos related to gardening in Shortlands, we provide captions and transcripts to support people who are deaf or hard of hearing. We check colour contrast and allow text resizing without loss of content or function.

If you encounter barriers when using our Shortlands garden content or visiting our community spaces, please tell us what you were doing, which part of the content or route caused difficulty, and how you would like to receive the information (for example: large print, audio recording, plain language, or a phone call). We carefully record and prioritise accessibility requests to improve access for everyone.

We welcome ongoing collaboration with the Shortlands community. While many pages aim for WCAG 2.1 AA conformance, some third-party or legacy content may not yet meet our standards. We are working to remediate these items and will provide alternative formats on request. When you contact our accessibility team using the contact options provided on this site, we will acknowledge your request and provide a resolution or an update within a reasonable timeframe.