Our website accessibility

On our main website (www.starlingbank.com), we’re actively working to ensure compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (the “Guidance”), published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international standards organization for the World Wide Web, founded and led by Tim Berners-Lee. The Guidance sets out recommendations for making websites accessible to everyone – including people with a permanent, temporary or conditional disability or impairment.

As we understand that some of our website users may be using screen readers or assistive technologies, we’ve taken extra measures to make our website accessible however people are engaging with it. This is a key commitment for us.

What we are doing

We give links descriptive names, so you know exactly what they’re about. You won’t find any ‘click heres’ in these parts.
Alternative text is used for non-text content (e.g. images), so anyone who is unable to see the content can have it read out to them by a screen reader instead.
If you’re using a screen reader, we’ll make sure any fields you’ve been asked to complete are read out with their associated label, so you know exactly what information to enter.
We have a team of copywriters who focus on making simple, jargon-free content.
On every page, users can bypass the navigation menu and skip straight to the main content, if they want to.
Our tables always follow the same clear format with columns, rows and clear headings. We will only use tables when we really need to.
Large pages can take more time and data to download. We’re actively seeking out ways to reduce our page sizes and load times.
We make sure that text always has strong colour contrasts between foreground and background colours.
Our website can be zoomed in as far as 200%, without compromising functionality or any of the key content.
When a customer navigates our website via a keyboard, each element (e.g. a link) is outlined in blue when it’s selected, just for extra clarity.
Our site navigation is consistent throughout our website and is accessible with only a keyboard.
We use the correct default HTML tags so that screen readers can easily read the elements on a page. We also use headings in a clear and consistent way; and we always make sure they describe what’s on the page.

Browser support

As part of our deployment process we carry out browser testing. We check against the latest versions of browsers, this means the experience may be degraded if you are viewing our site on an older version of a browser. Our supported browsers include the latest versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge.
Some areas of our website require JavaScript to run at their best. For those who browse the web with JavaScript disabled, we’ll always let you know if you’re missing out on anything.

What we are working on

Adding captions and transcripts to videos across the site. We’ve made some progress, but we still have some work to do and we’re committed to getting there.
Making more functionality available from a keyboard. Most of our website is navigable via keyboard, but there are still some areas that aren’t – and that’s what we’re working to fix.
Improving our error handling on user input. We don’t just want to tell you an error has occurred; we want to explain what the error was so you can try again and enter the correct information.
Adding in keyboard shortcuts.

Have a suggestion to make our website more accessible? Let us know! Send us your ideas on how we can improve our accessibility.

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