Accessibility of our websites and mobile apps
Our commitment
Home Affairs is committed to making our websites and mobile apps user-friendly regardless of your cultural, linguistic, or religious background. We aim to make our digital services inclusive for all users regardless of their abilities or reliance on Assistive Technology (AT) by following worldwide web standards.
Worldwide web standards
We are working to comply with Levels A and AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. This describes how to make web content more usable and accessible for everyone.
Documents
Many of the downloadable publications and forms we offer are in Portable Document Format (PDF). This format can cause problems for some users so we have included a guide. Visit Using PDF Files.
Translating and interpreting
We provide the Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National). This service helps people who do not speak English in their daily lives, as well as agencies and businesses to communicate with their non-English speaking clients.
You can contact TIS National on 131 450 (within Australia).
Accessibility assistance
The Home Affairs websites and mobile apps are the work of many authors in a changing environment. Because of this, there is always the possibility that accessibility issues may be encountered. If you experience any issues or need to request a different, accessible version of our website content, contact us using the form Request for accessibility assistance.
Explaining our decisions
We must give you a statement setting out the reasons for our decision if we refuse to:
- allow you access to a document
- amend your personal information
- waive or reduce the amount of your charges.
We will also tell you how to have our decision reviewed.
Generally, we must provide the statement within 30 days of receiving your request.
Reviewing our decisions
You can ask us to review our decision if you do not agree with it.
Abstract
Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible. Following these guidelines will make content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities, including accommodations for blindness and low vision, deafness and hearing loss, limited movement, speech disabilities, photosensitivity, and combinations of these, and some accommodation for learning disabilities and cognitive limitations; but will not address every user need for people with these disabilities. These guidelines address accessibility of web content on desktops, laptops, tablets, and mobile devices. Following these guidelines will also often make Web content more usable to users in general.
WCAG 2.2 success criteria are written as testable statements that are not technology-specific. Guidance about satisfying the success criteria in specific technologies, as well as general information about interpreting the success criteria, is provided in separate documents. See Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) Overview for an introduction and links to WCAG technical and educational material.
WCAG 2.2 extends Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 [WCAG21], which was published as a W3C Recommendation June 2018. Content that conforms to WCAG 2.2 also conforms to WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1. The WG intends that for policies requiring conformance to WCAG 2.0 or WCAG 2.1, WCAG 2.2 can provide an alternate means of conformance. The publication of WCAG 2.2 does not deprecate or supersede WCAG 2.0 or WCAG 2.1. While WCAG 2.0 and WCAG 2.1 remain W3C Recommendations, the W3C advises the use of WCAG 2.2 to maximize future applicability of accessibility efforts. The W3C also encourages use of the most current version of WCAG when developing or updating Web accessibility policies.
Status of This Document
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at https://www.w3.org/TR/.
To comment, file an issue in the W3C WCAG GitHub repository. Although the proposed Success Criteria in this document reference issues tracking discussion, the Working Group requests that public comments be filed as new issues, one issue per discrete comment. It is free to create a GitHub account to file issues. If filing issues in GitHub is not feasible, send email to public-agwg-comments@w3.org (comment archive).
This document was published by the Accessibility Guidelines Working Group as a Recommendation using the Recommendation track.
W3C recommends the wide deployment of this specification as a standard for the Web.
A W3C Recommendation is a specification that, after extensive consensus-building, is endorsed by W3C and its Members, and has commitments from Working Group members to royalty-free licensing for implementations.
This document was produced by a group operating under the 1 August 2017 W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
This document is governed by the 12 June 2023 W3C Process Document.