Accessibility Statement
Accessibility Statement
ecoplus, Lower Austria's business agency, endeavors to make its website accessible in accordance with the Lower Austrian Anti-Discrimination Act 2017 (Directive (EU) 2016/2102), in particular Section 5 "Barrier-free access to websites and mobile applications". Another basis is the law of November 22, 2018 on barrier-free access to the websites and mobile applications of public bodies (Lower Austrian Anti-Discrimination Act 2017).
Compatibility with the requirements
Due to the following incompatibilities and exceptions, this website is only partially compliant with conformance level AA of the “Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Web - WCAG 2.1” or with the applicable European Standard EN 301 549 V2.1.2 (2018-08).
Non-accessible content
The contents listed below are not barrier-free for the following reasons:
a) Incompatibility with accessibility provisions
The alternative text is missing for some integrated images or is displayed on the eglish website in German version. Therefore this information is not accessible to screen reader users or has to be translated. Thus, the WCAG success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content) is not met. We plan to complete these missing labels on an ongoing basis.
Some embedded videos lack subtitles, thus the content displayed is not available to hearing-impaired users. Therefore, the WCAG success criterion 1.2.2 (subtitles available) is not met.
b) Disproportionate burden
Our videos are hosted and published on the YouTube video and Vimeo platform. It is technically not possible to provide the required audio descriptions for some of these older videos. Thus, the WCAG success criterion 1.2.5 (audio description available) is not met. We believe that correcting these old videos would be a disproportionate burden in terms of accessibility regulations. However, we plan to gradually remove older videos from the ecoplus website and new videos from 2019/2020 are being subtitled soon after release.
c) The content does not fall within the scope of the applicable legislation
Many, mainly older PDF documents are not barrier-free. For example, PDF documents are not tagged so that they cannot be captured and used by screen reader users, or only inadequately. Thus, the WCAG success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role, value) is not met.
Please let us know if you have difficulties with specific documents. We will prepare the content barrier-free on request and exchange the documents subsequently or supplement them with barrier-free alternatives. We try to prepare new documents barrier-free according to WCAG 2.1 and PDF/UA compliant before publication. Any published barrier-free documents are labeled as such with (barrier-free) appended after the document name.
Contents from third parties, for example studies or presentation materials from external lecturers, which are not within the sphere of influence of ecoplus, Lower Austria’s Business Agency, are excluded from Directive (EU) 2016/2102. No statement can be made for these third-party contents with regard to compatibility with accessibility regulations.
Preparation of this Accessibility Statement
This statement was drawn up on 01 July 2020 and adapted on 2nd January 2024.
The WZG compatibility assessment of the website concerning the implementation of Directive (EU) 2016/2102 requirements was carried out in the form of an accessibility evaluation in February 2020 by two certified web-accessibility experts from the agency gugler brand & digital in accordance with WCAG 2.1, Level A and AA. Ten important subpages with all available templates and functionalities of the website were checked. In February 2020, a blind test person conducted a user test and our website was checked with his assistive technology (screen reader).
Individual page content is regularly checked by the web editorial staff or, when new content is published, with the WAVE-tool.
Feedback and contact details
The offers and services on this website are continuously improved and expanded. Barrier-free operability and accessibility is a major concern for us. We would be grateful for any advice should you encounter barriers or shortcomings during use. Ideally, please send us these messages and suggestions to headoffice@ecoplus.at with the subject “Report of a barrier on the www.ecoplus.at website”. Please describe the problem and provide us with the URL(s) of the affected sub-pages or document. We will check your request and contact you as soon as possible.
Enforcement procedures
If you are not satisfied with the answers you receive from the above-mentioned contact option, you can lodge a complaint with the Austrian Research Promotion Agency with Limited Liability (FFG). The FFG accepts complaints electronically via the contact form.
Contact form for the Complaints Office
The complaints will be examined by FFG to determine whether they relate to violations of the Web Accessibility Act, in particular deficiencies in compliance with accessibility requirements, by the federal government or an institution under it. If the complaint is justified, the FFG must make recommendations for action to the federal government or the legal entities concerned and propose measures to remedy the defects in question.
Further information on the complaints procedure
Optional contents: Additional information
The www.ecoplus.at website was launched in this form in January 2017 and has been continuously updated and expanded since then. In 2020, many adaptations were made to improve web accessibility, such as contrast improvements, slider optimizations, online forms, accessible PDFs, subtitles for videos, alternative texts for images, etc.
Despite the age and size of this website, the ecoplus Business Agency makes every effort to ensure barrier-free access to all online offers and services. Since 2008, we have based our work on the guidelines for accessible content as per WCAG 2.0 in accordance with the national legislation, “E-Government Act 2004”, and the applicable anti-discrimination regulations.