Website accessibility

Access Action Plan 2011-15 

This plan is designed to formalise our commitment to access and inclusion and provide an effective blueprint for identifying and addressing barriers and realising new access opportunities. To request copies of this document in different formats (e.g. large print, braille) — please contact us.

• Access Action Plan 2011-15 (PDF - 238 kb)
  
• Access Action Plan 2011-15 (MS Word - 150 kb)

Website Accessibility

We have designed the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne website (www.rbg.vic.gov.au) to be as accessible as possible.

Exceptions

Whilst the Gardens strive to adhere to the accepted guidelines and standards for accessibility and usability, it is not always possible to do so in all areas of the web site.

We are continually seeking out solutions that will bring all areas of the site up to the same level of overall accessibility. In the meantime should you experience any difficulty in accessing the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne website, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Standards compliance

The RBG Melbourne website is built using valid XHTML and CSS 2.0.

In designing this site we have endeavoured to comply with level A priority in most cases and some level AA and AAA priorities in others. In addition, we have followed our own accessibility standards in line with recognised best practice, such as:

• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) accessibility standards
  
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0
• The Victorian Government's Accessibility Toolkit
  
• Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) accessibility guidelines
  

Please note: In some cases, code generated by third parties embedded on the Gardens website is unable to be validated such as Google Maps. However, these embedded features do not hamper the overall accessibility of the pages upon which they appear; the information they contain is available in accessible formats on the same page.

We are continually working to improve the accessibility standard of our site with final goal of a fully level A and AA priority compliant website.

Web browsers

The Gardens website has been designed for viewing and best performance on Firefox 3.5+. While the website was designed for Firefox 3.5+, it has been tested in all major modern browsers (IE8, Opera, Safari, Chrome) and performs equally well in all those browsers, but may look slightly different. We have also performed limited testing on older non-standards-compliant browsers.

JavaScript

JavaScript is used throughout this site. However, all site content should still be accessible to users with JavaScript disabled.

In order to view and navigate the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne website as designed, JavaScript should be enabled on your web browser. Refer to your browser help files for instructions on how to enable this functionality.

Font sizes

The Gardens website has been designed to allow scalable font sizes. This function is located at the top right of each page.

Navigation

• The primary navigation is a set of expandable menus that provide quick and easy access to the site’s major content areas. These menus are text-based lists and will still work for users using alternative browsing technologies, or who have javascript and/or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) disabled.
  
• The site search functionality is powered by Google Search.
• A 'Skip to content' link is available for users using text-only browsers or surfing with CSS-disabled. This link appears at the top of the page and allows you to skip directly to the page content without having to scroll past the primary navigation and site-wide utility links.
• A comprehensive sitemap provides one-click access to content deep within the site.
  
• The Gardens website may be navigated by using the Tab key to access most areas and links within our site on a page by page basis.

PDF files

Adobe® Reader® 9 is free software you can use to read and access the information contained within PDF files. Adobe Reader 9 contains many capabilities specifically designed to make it easier for people with disabilities to read PDF files, regardless of whether the files have been optimized for accessibility.

Feedback

Please let us know of any problems you may have encountered, or of any features that you have found particularly useful. Contact us by email: webmaster.

We welcome any feedback you might like to give us especially where you feel we are not compliant or could provide better accessibility.

If you require any of the information on this website in any other format (including hard copy) please contact us.