Accessibility statement.
This statement follows the structure the Government Digital Service model statement uses, because the councils, schools and colleges we sell to are asked for one in that shape. It names each surface separately, because their conformance differs and a single blanket claim would be false. Where something does not conform, we say so and say when.
What this statement covers
ComplyChat is operated by CIaaS Limited. This statement covers four surfaces, and treats each one separately:
- The marketing site at chat.org.uk, which is what you are reading now.
- The member app at comply.chat.org.uk – the messaging app that staff, volunteers, families and residents use, in a browser or installed to a home screen.
- The client portal, which a customer organisation's administrators use to manage channels and people, review the record and read the transparency feed.
- The operator console, used only by CIaaS Limited's own staff to run the service. It is not a customer surface, but people who use it are entitled to the same access, so it is assessed and reported here.
It does not cover Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 or Microsoft Purview, which customers use under their own Microsoft licences, nor the content that customers and their members put into channels.
How accessible ComplyChat is
Our target across every surface is full conformance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.2, level AA. We do not claim more than that, and section 07 lists exactly what stands between each surface and it. In summary:
- The member app is the most tested surface. Its automated audit is clean of structural defects; keyboard reach is measured at 97% of focusable elements showing a visible focus state, with every gesture having a visible fallback; the three colour-contrast failures found in August 2026 were fixed on 5 September 2026; pinch-zoom of the whole app is deliberately switched off (section 03); and the app adopts the iPhone and iPad system text styles so that the Dynamic Type setting scales it, with device verification listed in section 07.
- The client portal was clean of automated violations at its last audit, after four unlabelled form controls were fixed in July 2026.
- The operator console had three automated findings at its first full audit on 17 August 2026, all fixed the same day with a regression test, and the audit re-run of 5 September 2026 records one remaining contrast defect on it, listed in section 07.
- The marketing site was brought into the same audit harness on 5 September 2026; what that audit found and what remains open is listed in section 07.
No surface has been tested with assistive-technology users. Section 09 says so plainly and section 08 says when that testing happens.
Text size and zoom.
In the member app, pinch-zoom of the whole screen is switched off on purpose. The app is built to feel like the messaging apps people already use, with a fixed viewport, so that the message list, the composer and the keyboard behave predictably on a phone. That is a choice we have made, and we are not describing it as a defect we intend to fix.
What we do instead: text follows the text-size setting of your device – the browser's or Android's text-size setting, and on iPhone and iPad the Dynamic Type setting (Settings, Accessibility, Larger Text), which the app opts into through the system text styles – and the layout is designed to stay usable at large sizes; photographs and images in a conversation can be zoomed individually. On iPhone and iPad the browser does not honour the viewport setting on its own, so the app also blocks the pinch gesture itself; the outcome is the same on every phone. Disabling pinch-zoom does not meet WCAG success criterion 1.4.4 (Resize text) in the way that criterion is usually read, and we list it under section 07 for that reason.
The marketing site, the client portal and the operator console do not disable zoom.
Feedback and contact
If you cannot access part of ComplyChat, need information in a different format, or want to tell us about an accessibility problem, contact us; we aim to acknowledge every message within one UK working day:
Email: enquiries@chat.org.uk
Phone: 020 3095 1100, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, excluding English bank holidays
If you use ComplyChat through an organisation – a charity, care provider, school, college, chartered body or regulator – you can also raise it with that organisation, which can pass it to us.
Enforcement
The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 in England, Scotland and Wales. Where ComplyChat is supplied to a public sector body, those regulations apply to the body's use of it. If you are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS), which handles enquiries on behalf of the EHRC in Great Britain, including Scotland. In Northern Ireland the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland has that role.
Technical information and compliance status
CIaaS Limited is committed to making ComplyChat accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 as they apply to the public bodies we supply.
Compliance status. ComplyChat is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and the design decision listed below. We do not claim a higher level of conformance for any surface.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the reasons given. Each item names the surface, the success criterion, what we found and the date by which it is fixed or verified.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
| Surface | What does not conform | WCAG 2.2 criterion | Status and date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Member app | Text scaling on iPhone and iPad through the Dynamic Type setting. The app adopts the system text styles so that Larger Text scales it; the change is verified on a physical iPhone and iPad before this row is removed. | 1.4.4 Resize text | Built 5 September 2026; device verification by 30 September 2026, after which this row is removed at the next review. |
| Member app | Pinch-zoom of the whole app is disabled by the viewport declaration (see section 03). Text still scales with the operating-system text-size setting, and images zoom individually. | 1.4.4 Resize text | Deliberate design decision with the mitigation stated in section 03. Not scheduled for change. Reviewed at each statement review. |
| Marketing site (chat.org.uk) | Automated checks only. Every published page is checked with axe-core against WCAG 2.2 A and AA at 1440px and 390px wide, in the default state of each page plus the contact-form dialog, and passes with no violations; the keyboard path through the contact dialog is probed and passes. Expanded states (the FAQ accordions, the "show all" folds, the showcase panels and the configurator) are covered by review, not by the automated scan. The site presents in a light appearance only and honours the reduced-motion preference throughout. | Not assessed by automation beyond the default state | Audited 5 September 2026 (fifteen contrast defects found and fixed in the same release); re-run on each audit cycle. |
| Marketing site (printed collateral) | The trustee briefing, the TCES briefing and the MDM deployment note are handed over as PDF. Their HTML sources pass the automated checks; the PDF renders have not been checked against PDF/UA and carry no accessibility tagging. | PDF/UA (documents) | Tagging and a PDF/UA check by 31 December 2026, or the collateral is offered as HTML. |
| Operator console | One text element in the Replay drawer (the "edited" marker beside an amended message) renders at a contrast ratio of 3.63:1 at its size, below the 4.5:1 minimum. | 1.4.3 Contrast (minimum) | Found on 17 August 2026 and still open at the audit of 5 September 2026; fixed in the next release, by 30 September 2026. |
| All surfaces | No testing with screen-reader or other assistive-technology users has been carried out. | Not assessed | Testing with assistive-technology users is commissioned ahead of our first public-sector procurement submission; this statement is updated with its findings. Until it is done, no surface is described as accessible to assistive-technology users beyond what automated checks and keyboard probes can show. |
Fixed since the first audit, so you know the list above is current
- Operator console, 17 August 2026: two selection controls on the customers view had no accessible name; twenty-one disclosure controls on the audit view had no accessible name; one scrolling table on the health view could not receive keyboard focus (WCAG 4.1.2, 2.1.1) – fixed the same day, with a regression test that checks the rendered page; confirmed clean by the audit re-run of 5 September 2026.
- Member app, 5 September 2026: three text elements – the status line beneath a channel's title, the recorded tag beside it, and the label on the alerts-readiness advisory – fell short of the 4.5:1 contrast ratio (WCAG 1.4.3). Found on 17 August 2026 and fixed on 5 September 2026 by raising their opacity and darkening a colour token, with a test that now measures the ratios on every change.
- Client portal, 12 July 2026: four selection controls with no accessible name (WCAG 4.1.2) – fixed; the portal now carries labels or accessible names on each.
- Member app, 12 July 2026: 208 colour-contrast failures across the muted text colour used in both portals, and a white-on-green call button (WCAG 1.4.3) – fixed by darkening the tokens; the audit measured zero contrast failures product-wide that night, apart from the items found later and listed above.
- Member app, 12 July 2026: the read state of a message was shown as two red ticks, a hue-only change from the grey of a delivered message (WCAG 1.4.1 Use of colour) – fixed; read ticks are now blue, and colour and shape together carry the state.
- Member app, 12 July 2026: a presence indicator with an attribute not permitted on its element, a list with children that were not list items, and interactive rows nested inside interactive rows (WCAG 4.1.2, 1.3.1) – fixed.
- Member app, 12 July 2026: the emoji panel could not be dismissed with the Escape key (WCAG 2.1.2) – fixed.
Disproportionate burden
We are not claiming that any item is a disproportionate burden.
Content that is not within the scope of the regulations
Documents, images, recordings and other files that customers and their members put into a channel are the customer's content, not ours, and are outside the scope of this statement. Where the app displays such a file, the viewer that displays it is within scope.
What we are doing
- The automated audit is part of the product's own test harness and is re-run against the live product on each audit cycle; two of its checks run in the product's standard test suite on every change, so a fix cannot quietly regress.
- The colour tokens are covered by a test that measures contrast ratios, so a regression fails the build rather than waiting for the next audit.
- The marketing site is in the same audit harness as the product surfaces from 5 September 2026, so this statement reports a measured result for it.
- Testing with assistive-technology users is commissioned ahead of our first public-sector procurement submission; this statement is updated with what it finds.
How this statement was prepared
This statement was prepared on 5 September 2026. It reflects three audits carried out by CIaaS Limited using its own harness, not by an external auditor:
- 12 July 2026: axe-core version 4.12, running the WCAG 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 A and AA rule sets, across 30 rendered states of the member app (light and dark), the client portal and the operator console; target-size measurement against the WCAG 2.5.8 24-pixel floor and the Apple Human Interface Guidelines 44-point advisory; and scripted keyboard probes for tab reachability, Escape dismissal and visible focus. Six independent expert-review lenses were applied to the captured screens in the same exercise.
- 17 August 2026: the same mechanical audit re-pointed so that it reached every operator console view, across 32 rendered states, which is when the operator console items above were found and fixed.
- 5 September 2026: the same mechanical audit extended to the marketing site at chat.org.uk, and re-run across the product surfaces, which regenerated the audit output and confirmed the operator console fixes.
The audit output is kept as machine-readable files alongside the product's design catalogue. No manual screen-reader audit and no testing with assistive-technology users has been carried out; that testing is scheduled in section 08, and nothing above should be read as claiming it has happened.
Review
We review this statement whenever an audit is run, whenever a surface changes in a way that affects the items above, and in any event at least every twelve months. The Effective date at the top always reflects the most recent version. Next review by: 6 September 2027.