Accessibility

Using this site, and the paperwork behind the dispute

This site is built to be used with a keyboard, at a readable contrast and without animation if you would rather not have it. Building disputes also arrive as scanned contracts and long reports, so this page covers those too.

Last updated: 23 September 2026

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. That is a statement about how this site was built. It is not a certificate. No independent accessibility audit has been carried out, and we do not claim the site conforms.

This page also sets out what has not been tested. A statement that lists only the good parts is no use to someone who has just hit a barrier. Sydney Building Lawyers is an informational website about building and construction law in New South Wales, and building matters bring access problems of their own: a contract photographed on site, a defects list in a spreadsheet, an expert report of a hundred pages. Those are dealt with below as well.

The standard we aim at

WCAG is published by the World Wide Web Consortium. Version 2.2 became a W3C Recommendation on 12 December 2024 and is the current version. It sets out four principles — content should be perceivable, operable, understandable and robust — and turns each one into a criterion that can be tested.

Level AA is the middle of the three conformance levels and the one most organisations adopt. Aiming at a standard and conforming to it are not the same thing. A conformance claim is something you make after testing, and some of the testing that matters most here has not been done. What follows keeps the two apart, so you can see which is which.

What has been built in

These were done while the site was being built, not added afterwards.

Real landmarks on every page — a header, a navigation region, a main content region and a footer — so software that moves through a page by its structure has a structure to move through.
One first-level heading per page, with the headings under it in order and no level skipped.
A Skip to content link as the first thing the keyboard reaches, so you can jump past the menu to the page itself.
Anything you can click, you can also reach and operate with the keyboard alone.
On a narrow screen the menu can be opened from the keyboard, keeps focus inside itself while it is open, closes when you press Escape, and returns focus to the button that opened it.
A visible outline around whatever currently has keyboard focus, so you can always see where you are on the page.
Text colours measured against the backgrounds they actually sit on, to the WCAG AA thresholds of 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text and interface components.
Nothing on the site is signalled by colour alone.
Images that carry meaning have a text alternative. Images that are decoration are marked as decoration, so they are skipped rather than read out as noise.
If your device is set to reduce motion, animation is not played and transitions are cut to almost nothing.
Layouts checked at phone, tablet and desktop widths, with no sideways scrolling at any of them.

Colour is measured, not judged by eye. Where a colour fell short of the threshold on a background it was used on, the colour was changed everywhere it appeared rather than left because it looked close enough.

Using this site with a keyboard

Tab moves forward through the links and buttons. Shift and Tab moves back. Enter follows a link or presses a button. The first stop on any page is the Skip to content link.

On a narrow screen, the menu button opens the navigation. Escape closes it, and focus goes back to the button you opened it with.

If the focus outline disappears somewhere, or the order of the stops makes no sense, that is a defect rather than a design choice. We would like to hear about it.

What has not been tested for accessibility

This part is about the testing of the website itself, not about the law on the rest of this site.

No screen-reader testing pass has been done. Nobody has worked through this site with NVDA, JAWS, VoiceOver or TalkBack. The landmarks, the text alternatives and the heading order were built so that a screen reader has something sensible to work with. Building for a screen reader and testing with one are different things, and we are not going to describe the first as though it were the second.
There has been no independent accessibility audit and no certification. Nobody outside the team that built the site has checked it.
Automated checking was used during the build. Automated checking finds only part of the problem; most accessibility failures need a person to find them.
Behaviour at very large text sizes and at high browser zoom has not been measured separately from the width checks.
Documents and websites published by other organisations are outside our control. That includes NCAT, NSW Fair Trading, Building Commission NSW, and anything sent to you by a builder, an owners corporation, an insurer or an expert.

This is the section of the page worth trusting most, and it should get shorter over time. When it does, the date at the top of this page changes with it.

Documents you cannot read

Much of a building dispute arrives as paper that somebody has scanned or photographed: a contract signed on a kitchen bench, a variation written on the back of a quote, a payment claim, a defects schedule, an expert report. A scanned page is a picture. A screen reader cannot read a picture of text, and enlarging it usually makes it blurred rather than bigger.

If a document you have been sent is one you cannot read, say so when you send it to us. We can read it to you over the telephone, set out what it says in plain text in the body of an email, or go through it clause by clause with you. We cannot change the form the other side used, but we can make sure you know what is in it.

Do not put a document aside until you can read it. Building matters run on dates — dates in the contract, dates in a notice, dates in tribunal directions — and those dates keep running. Send it on and tell us the day it arrived, even if you have not been able to read a word of it.

If what arrived is a payment claim or a notice under a building contract, treat it as urgent. Our page on Security of Payment explains why the sequence matters.

If your matter goes to NCAT

Home building cases in New South Wales are managed through NCAT’s Consumer and Commercial Division. NCAT publishes what it can arrange for a person with disability, and it asks for these things to be organised ahead of the hearing rather than raised on the day.

An Auslan interpreter at your hearing, arranged and paid for by NCAT.
An assistive listening device or a hearing loop, on request.
Forms and publications in another format, such as large print, from the NCAT registry.
Easy Read fact sheets, including one on what to expect at a hearing.
Augmentative and alternative communication at a hearing. NCAT asks you to say beforehand that you will use it, so that more time can be allowed.
A telephone or video hearing if you cannot come in person.
Contact through the National Relay Service if you are deaf or hard of hearing, or have difficulty speaking.

NCAT says most of its hearing venues are wheelchair accessible and asks you to contact it about a particular venue. Ask early: a building matter often has directions to comply with before the hearing date, so the arrangements and the deadlines run together. NCAT’s services for people with disability page is the place to check.

If English is not your first language

Tell us early, and tell us which language. Building contracts are written in a technical English that plenty of first-language speakers struggle with, so this is not an unusual thing to ask.

If you are a party to proceedings at NCAT and you need an interpreter, NCAT can organise one and the service is free of charge. Ask as early as you can, and tell NCAT the language, the dialect if that matters, and whether the gender of the interpreter matters. An interpreter for a witness or for a representative is different: NCAT says you have to organise that one yourself.

Away from the tribunal, the Australian Government’s Translating and Interpreting Service (TIS National) exists for contact with agencies and businesses. If a family member usually translates for you, that is fine, but tell us who they are so we know who we are speaking to.

If you need something in another format

Ask, and say what actually works for you. Large print, plain text in the body of an email instead of an attachment, a telephone call instead of a form — if we hold the information, we will try to give it to you in a form you can use.

Our contact page sets out the ways to reach us. The enquiry form is one of them, not the only one. If the form itself is the barrier, use another way and say so.

Telling us about a problem

You do not need the technical name for what went wrong. The menu will not close is a perfectly good report and we can usually work from it.

Any of the following makes it quicker, but do not hold off reporting something because you do not have all of it.

The address of the page, or enough of its heading for us to find it
What you were trying to do
What happened instead
The browser and the device you were using
Any assistive technology you use, and its version if you know it

What happens after you report it

We will acknowledge your report and tell you who is looking at it. We will not leave it unanswered.

We will tell you what we found, whether it can be fixed, and when we expect that to happen. Where a fix is going to take time, we will give you the information another way in the meantime rather than asking you to wait for a website.

If that does not resolve it for you, our complaints page sets out how to take it further. A complaint about building work itself is a different matter and goes elsewhere: NSW Fair Trading and Building Commission NSW both publish how to raise one.

The law behind this page

The Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) makes discrimination on the ground of disability unlawful in areas that include the provision of goods, services and facilities. It is Commonwealth law and the current text is on the Federal Register of Legislation, linked below.

So a barrier on this site is not only bad practice. If you think you have been treated unlawfully, say so plainly when you contact us, and you are entitled to take it further than us.

When this page was last changed

This statement was last reviewed on 23 September 2026 and describes the site as it was built at that date.

It is not a fixed document. As testing is done, the list of what has not been tested will shrink and this page will change with it. If you are reading this long after the date above and that list still looks the same, that is worth telling us about too.