Accessibility
Our approach
We aim to embed accessibility across our all aspects of our work, including access to our library and collection, our building, events programme and website.
Visiting NIVAL
Our building is fully accessible to disabled users. When you book your visit, please let us know if you have any specific access requirements. If you have any feedback or need any further assistance, please email nivalinfo@ncad.ie.
Access to our materials
All of the items in our collections are accessible to researchers through the NIVAL Reading Room. We digitise a sample of materials from each special collection that has been processed and provide these through our online catalogue in order to give researchers a flavour of what they will find. However, the span of the special collections is even greater and we encourage researchers to visit NIVAL in person if possible. When visiting NIVAL, we ask that researchers observe our handling guidelines and terms of use. If you have a query about materials that are being processed, please get in touch.
Website Accessibility
NIVAL is committed to providing an accessible website. Our website is designed with a good level of contrast and font sizes so that it is usable for visitors with a range of sight abilities. We have also tried to make the website content as easy as possible to understand. We have developed the website to be accessible with common assistive technologies and different ways of using websites. This means that you can:
- change colours and contrast levels
- zoom in without the text spilling off the screen
- navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
- listen to most of the website using a screen reader
- navigate a page using headings throughout our written content
- navigate our websites with assistive technology via embedded landmarks and ARIA functionality
Compliance
Our website endeavours to conform to the AA success criteria for accessibility as defined the Web Consortium WCAG 2.1 guidelines. It has been tested using SortSite – an industry standard accessibility testing tool.
Limitations
While we aim ensure the accessibility of our website, there are some known limitations. If you experience any problems viewing our website we are keen to hear from you and will endeavour to correct any problems. The known limitations are documented below, we will endeavour to review and improve these over time.
- Embedded video and audio players can sometimes be difficult to use with assistive technology.
- PDFs and documents are not always accessible.
- We aim to provide captions and/or transcripts with all our videos but that might not be available for all video content.
- We have tried to minimise the impact, but some elements have inherited minor code and access limitations.
- Our online catalogue has some inherited accessibility limitations from application software that runs it.
- In some places, link focus outlines could be improved to make it easier to navigate via keyboard input
Need assistance?
If you have any feedback or need any further assistance with accessing our website, please email nivalinfo@ncad.ie.