accessibility guidelines for online visa application tracking

Dear Sir or Madam,

Please can you confirm what level of accessibility guidelines you
require VFS (vfsglobal.org) to comply with for the web-based visa
application forms? I ask as I do not believe that their websites
meet any useful accessibility standards – for example, you can not
resize windows, you can not select text to paste it in to a
text-to-speech converter etc. Please detail the exact specification
– I assume that you comply with open, international standards in
this space for example http://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/wcag.php. Also,
please explain the processes you follow to ensure adherence for
example requiring independent testing etc. Are they required (or
allowed) to apply different standards to different country specific
sites or their central site?

Yours faithfully,

Vincent Aleck

Dear Braint Michael (UKBA International Group),

Hello,

thanks for your reply which is quite detailed. Can you please
clarify a couple of things?

a) This is feedback rather than a question: "Some of the content,
which is aimed at an overseas audience, is translated into their
local language" - this is fine, on some pages (e.g. the "check the
status of my visa" page) users can not copy and paste, so are
unable to copy/paste items in to online translators.

b) "Difficulty in using our information services on the grounds of
disability was not an issue that was raised in our customer surveys
and feedback" - how do you assess this? For example, how would you
contact users who just gave up because it was too hard?

c) RE: point 7: Is this a formal statement that UKBA is fulfilling
all of its obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act?

Yours sincerely,

Vincent Aleck

Dear Braint Michael (UKBA International Group),

thanks for your reply which is quite detailed. Can you please
clarify a couple of things?

a) This is feedback rather than a question: "Some of the content,
which is aimed at an overseas audience, is translated into their
local language" - this is fine, on some pages (e.g. the "check the
status of my visa" page) users can not copy and paste, so are
unable to copy/paste items in to online translators.

b) "Difficulty in using our information services on the grounds of
disability was not an issue that was raised in our customer surveys
and feedback" - how do you assess this? For example, how would you
contact users who just gave up because it was too hard?

c) RE: point 7: Is this a formal statement that UKBA is fulfilling
all of its obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act?

Yours sincerely,

Vincent Aleck

Dear Braint Michael (UKBA International Group),

thanks for your help and reply.

Yours sincerely,

Vincent Aleck