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Accessibility

This website adapts to you.

A disability service with an inaccessible website would be a poor advertisement for itself. Here is what we have built, what we have tested, and what to do if something does not work.

The Accessibility button sits in the bottom corner of every page.

What is built in

Eight things you can change.

All of it free, all of it on by choice, none of it required.

Read aloud

Have any page read to you, using the voices already installed on your device. Choose the voice and the speed, pause and resume, skip a sentence, and the part being read is highlighted as it goes. You can also select just a paragraph and have only that read.

Colours and contrast

Six colour schemes: our normal palette, a pure black-on-white high contrast mode, a night mode, a warm cream, a yellow-on-blue scheme many people with dyslexia prefer, and a pale green tint.

Text and spacing

Four text sizes up to 150%, a switch to Atkinson Hyperlegible (a typeface designed by the Braille Institute specifically for low vision), and a setting that opens up line height, letter spacing and word spacing.

Translation

Translate the whole site into more than 100 languages. For anything that matters, we would rather book you a real interpreter, free of charge, through TIS National.

Reading aids

A reading ruler that follows your pointer, a screen mask that dims everything except the line you are on, and a text magnifier that enlarges whatever you point at.

Dictionary

Double-click any word on the site for a plain-English meaning, and have that read aloud too. For NDIS jargon specifically, we also keep a plain-English word list.

Reduced motion

Turn off every animation on the site. This also happens automatically if you have already asked your operating system to reduce motion.

Highlight links

Outline and underline every link on the page, so they are impossible to miss.

The underlying build

The part you should not have to notice.

A toolbar is not accessibility. This is the work that matters, and it is in the site whether or not you ever open the panel.

  • Full keyboard operation. Every link, button, form field, menu and accordion works with Tab, Enter, Space, Escape and the arrow keys. Focus is always visible, with a 3px ring.
  • Semantic structure. Real landmarks, one h1 per page, headings in order with no skipped levels, and a skip-to-content link.
  • Contrast. Every text and background pair meets at least 4.5:1, and large text at least 3:1. Checked, not assumed.
  • Touch targets. Nothing tappable is smaller than 44 by 44 pixels, with at least 8 pixels between targets.
  • Labelled forms. Visible labels, not placeholder text. Errors appear beside the field that caused them, are announced to screen readers, and never rely on colour alone.
  • Text scaling. The layout holds at 200% browser zoom and at 400% with reflow, with no horizontal scrolling and no clipped content.
  • Meaningful alternatives. Descriptive alt text on every image that carries information, and empty alt on the decorative ones so screen readers skip them.
  • Motion respects your settings. If your device asks for reduced motion, the animations do not run. No parallax, no autoplaying video, nothing that flashes.

Standard and status

Target: WCAG 2.2 Level AA.

Tested with: keyboard only, VoiceOver on macOS and iOS, NVDA on Windows, TalkBack on Android, 200% and 400% zoom, Windows High Contrast mode, and automated checks with axe and Lighthouse.

Last reviewed: August 2026.

Known limitations: the reading ruler, screen mask and magnifier follow a mouse or finger, so they do not help keyboard-only users. Translation is machine translation and will not always be accurate. We have not yet commissioned an independent accessibility audit, so we describe this as conformance we have built and tested for, not certified.

Questions

Common questions

No. Everything is built into the website itself. Your choices are saved in your own browser so they are still there next time you visit, and they are never sent to us or to anyone else.

It should not. The toolbar is an optional extra layer, not a replacement for the assistive technology you already use. The site is built to work properly with NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver, TalkBack, Dragon and browser zoom, whether or not you touch the toolbar. If you find a conflict, please tell us, because that is a bug we want to fix.

Products like Recite Me, UserWay and accessiBe are well known, but an overlay does not make a website conformant. The accessibility community's position, set out at overlayfactsheet.com, is that overlays can interfere with the assistive technology a person already uses and can create a false impression of compliance. So we did the underlying work properly and built these preferences in natively. It also means there is no subscription that could lapse and take the features with it.

We have built it to meet WCAG 2.2 Level AA, and we test with a keyboard, with VoiceOver and NVDA, at 400% zoom, and with contrast checked on every colour pair. We are not claiming certified conformance, because that requires an independent audit which we have not yet commissioned. If you hit something that does not work, that is the most useful thing you can tell us.

Yes, and at no cost. We can provide Easy Read versions of our service agreements, consent forms, invoices and anything else. Just ask. We can also provide large print, audio, or a plain printed copy if the website is not how you want to read this.

Then do not. Call us on 0414 851 688 and we will do the whole thing by phone, or come and see you. Nothing about Hope Harbour requires you to use a computer.

Tell us

Found something that does not work?

That is genuinely useful to us, and we would rather know. Tell us what you were trying to do, what happened, and what you were using, and we will fix it and tell you when it is done.

Email us Call 0414 851 688

Other ways to reach us

Interpreters. Call TIS National on 131 450, ask for Hope Harbour on 0414 851 688. Free for you.

Deaf, hearing or speech impaired. Use the National Relay Service at accesshub.gov.au.

Easy Read. Ask us for an Easy Read version of anything, at no cost.

Advocacy. Free independent advocates are listed at daru.org.au.