Accessibility

Northern is committed to ensuring our online services are accessible to as many users as possible. To achieve this, we have designed our site to comply with the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines assist website developers by describing best practices to implement websites that will be accessible to all users.

Click here to read Northern Credit Union’s Accessibility Policy

Click here to read Northern Credit Union's Multi-Year Accessibility Plan

Pages on this site were authored using technologies selected to produce user-friendly and visually pleasing content. Some older browsers may not support these technologies and while we make every effort to accommodate these browsers, it may be necessary to disable some features, such as Cascading Style Sheets (which controls the colours and fonts used) or JavaScript (which builds interactive dynamic content) on your browser to view the site.

If your browser does not support these technologies (or if they are disabled), the content of each page is still readable although the look and layout will be significantly altered. Best efforts have been made to make the site functional without utilizing these advanced features.

We recommend that users keep their browsers up-to-date to take advantage of new technologies.

Pages were also created to allow visually impaired users to use the site effectively using a screen reading aid. For example, all images have text describing the image, descriptive link text, and structured headings are used so that users can get an overview of the site and navigate quickly to desired sections.

Adjusting your browser settings

Our Internet Banking service can be adapted for use by partially sighted members. You can change some of the options in your Internet browser and, using the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, or Internet Explorer, you will be able to:

• Alter the size and colour of most text (but not images)
• Alter the background colour (black text on a yellow background gives the most contrast)
• Alter the line length, by changing the size and shape of your browser window
• override the colour schemes of this website and others with your preferred settings
• Refer to the accessibility topic in the help section of your browser for details on how to change your browser settings.

Technologies used

If you are technically inclined or wish to know more about how we achieve accessibility on this site, you may be interested in reading the content below.

• All pages on this site were authored using Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) 5 for markup.
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) have been used for visual layout, which follow the principle of separating content from presentation. If you are having difficulty reading the web pages because of the colours, fonts, etc, you can disable the CSS on your browser to view the site. Best efforts have been made to make the site functional without the use of CSS or JavaScript, although the look and layout will be significantly altered.
• Some pages on this site include JavaScript for browser effects.
• All pages in this site use structured semantic markup. H1 tags are used for main titles, H2 tags for subtitles, etc. This helps users get an overview of the site when using an access aid and jump quickly to desired sections of the site.
• Many links have TITLE attributes, except those where the text of the link already fully describes the target. These attributes describe where a link will take you if you click it to help you navigate effectively through the site.
• This site has been checked using W3C Validators for both HTML5 and CSS.

Testing and validation

To test for compliance, we have used the following accessibility aids and resources:

•    W3C WCAG Guidelines

•    This site has been checked using W3C Validators for both HTML5 and CSS. However, some complex interactive features of this site, such as banking and calculator pages, may not validate.

If you have any difficulties accessing any aspects of the site, please contact us.