Accessibility
This zoo exists to teach people about animals most of them have been taught to fear. That does not work if some of those people cannot use the website, so here is what we have done, what we have not, and how to tell us when we have got it wrong.
Last updated 30 August 2026
What we are aiming at
We are building this site to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 at level AA, which is the standard most commonly used in the United States as the practical benchmark for a public website. We are not claiming a formal audit or a certificate, because we have not had one. We are telling you the target and we are telling you where we are against it.
What is already in place
- Everything works with a keyboard. Every menu, every link, every form field and every button can be reached and operated with Tab and Enter, without a mouse. The dropdown menus in the navigation open on a click or an Enter press and close on Escape, and they never open just because a pointer drifted across them.
- Focus is visible. When you tab to something, you can see where you are. We have not removed focus outlines anywhere.
- Text contrast. Body text, headings and buttons are set against their backgrounds at contrast ratios meeting the AA threshold, which matters on a dark site more than on a light one.
- Photographs carry alternative text describing the animal or the person, so a screen reader reads something useful rather than a filename. Photographs that are purely decorative are marked as decorative so a screen reader skips them instead of interrupting you.
- Headings are real headings in a proper order, so you can navigate a page by its structure instead of scrolling through it.
- Forms have real labels attached to their fields, and errors are described in words rather than only as a red outline.
- Nothing flashes, auto-plays with sound, or moves in a way you cannot escape. The video behind the header is silent and decorative. The embedded video on the events page does not load or play until you press play.
- Motion respects your settings. If your device is set to reduce motion, the animated background and the entrance transitions do not run.
- Text resizes. The layout is built in relative units, so increasing your browser's text size enlarges the site rather than breaking it.
- It works on a phone at the sizes people actually use, without side-scrolling.
What we know is not right yet
Listing these is the point of the page. They are on the list to be fixed.
- Video captions. The video embedded on the events page is hosted on YouTube and relies on YouTube's automatic captions, which are not good enough to count. Properly written captions are being added.
- Longer descriptions for some photographs. Alternative text names the animal, but on a handful of images a fuller description of what is happening in the photograph would be more useful than the short one there now.
- No formal audit. Nobody independent has tested this site with a screen reader end to end. We would rather say that than imply otherwise.
- Third-party pages. When you donate you leave this site and finish on Zeffy's pages, and when you follow a social link you land on somebody else's platform. We do not control the accessibility of those and cannot fix them. If one of them stops you completing something, tell us and we will find you another way to do it.
Getting to the zoo and its programmes
Accessibility is not only a website question. If you or someone in your group needs something in order to take part in a programme, an event or a visit, whether that is physical access, a quieter session, extra time, or an animal encounter run differently, tell us when you book and we will arrange it rather than asking you to work around it.
Ask through the booking form or by email. It does not need to be a formal request and you do not have to explain more than you want to.
Telling us something does not work
If any part of this site stops you doing something, we want to know, and it is genuinely useful rather than an inconvenience. Email [email protected].
It helps if you can tell us the page, what you were trying to do, and what you use to browse, such as a screen reader, magnification or keyboard only. If you cannot easily give us that, send what you can and we will work it out.
We will reply within five working days, tell you whether we can fix it and roughly when, and give you the information another way in the meantime if the fix is going to take a while. If it is something we cannot fix, we will say so plainly rather than leaving you waiting.
Why this page exists
Plenty of organisations publish an accessibility statement that promises everything and commits to nothing. This one lists real gaps and gives a reply time, because a statement is worth exactly as much as the route it gives you to a person, and this one goes to the people running the zoo.