In December 2020, the State Hermitage presented a version of its website for people with visual impairments. As part of ensuring that the website is accessible to the widest possible audience, including people with special needs, the site has been adapted for partially sighted users.
Each page of the website now offers the facility to switch to an adapted version for the visually impaired – by clicking on the special eye icon in the top right-hand corner, they can choose from a variety of ways to enhance the readability of the information. Users can select contrasting colour palettes (black on white, white on black and dark blue on light blue), increase the font size up to 200%, turn off images, change the font type (between serif and sans-serif), increase character and line spacing, and there is also a function to hide all images. You can return to the normal version of the site at any time.
The version of the website for the visually impaired was prepared in accordance with Federal Law No. 419-FZ of 01 December 2014 “On Amending Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation Regarding the Social Protection of Persons with Disabilities in Connection with Ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities”. The developers relied on accessibility requirements formulated both in domestic (GOST R 52872-2019) and international (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1) standards.
Those standards define three levels of accessibility:
Level A – minimum accessibility level. Allows a visually impaired person to access an Internet resource without loss of information.
Level AA – level of full accessibility. Allows a visually impaired person to access to all structural elements of an Internet resource.
Level AAA – level of accessibility of specialized Internet resources for the visually impaired. Allows a visually impaired person to access an online resource using special technology designed for the visually impaired.
The State Hermitage website contains a large number of sections and subsections – it is an entire portal providing opportunities for studying material relating to many different spheres of culture. The majority of sections of the site now correspond to the highest level of accessibility of web resources - AAA, while in all other cases the Hermitage has striven to ensure a level of accessibility no lower than AA, with subsequent improvements. Several sections of the site have been completely redesigned to meet all standards and to become visually more user-friendly.
With the launch of an adapted version, the Hermitage is also making the website more accessible for alternative methods of presentation and navigation – text-to-speech, voice navigation, mouse-less navigation, and more. This choice is governed by the fact that the Hermitage website is a portal containing many illustrations and descriptive texts, as well as panoramic images and video clips.
Plans to develop the version of the site for the visually impaired include adding more alternative texts, including for the Digital Collection, so that visitors can obtain the most comprehensive information possible when using a screen reader.
Even after extensive testing with the involvement of the visually impaired community, there may still be shortcomings and temporary errors in the behaviour of the adapted version on different devices. If there are significant problems with the website, users can report them using the feedback form or by e-mail to: rеԁасtor@hermitage.ru.
