Accessibility Statement

We have applied many features on emirates.com to help you navigate the site. Following is a comprehensive list which we encourage you to read. We have included useful ways to help navigate some of the more complex widgets such as calendar controls as well as detail where we are currently facing challenges. We have worked with several organisations, including the American Foundation for the Blind and the Royal National Institute for the Blind, to test the usability of our site and to enhance and improve upon the experience for you. As mentioned previously, we have built emirates.com to WCAG 2.0 Level AA and have created a site that works well with NVDA and FireFox. We recommend using the latest versions of these screen readers. This is our first step and we will be building on this to include better support for other screen readers in the near future.

Skip to content: We have a skip to content link at the top of the page before our logo to help you navigate the page.

Images: We have applied descriptive alt tags to all images (and images of text) that provide information and applied null alt tags to all decorative images. In limited places we have added hidden text around content to remove the need for alt tags. We feel that adding this information for screen reader users enables us to deliver a richer experience over an alt tag. We have only done this in consultation with our accessibility partners.

Forms: All forms are accessible from the keyboard and have programmatic labels so that you can understand what the form field is. In various places across our booking engine we are using custom form fields and have worked hard to maintain a standard interaction.

Tables: Whilst we have a large number of tables in use on the site, any tables that are for presentational purposes have been given a presentation role so that the screen reader avoids reading out columns and row information. All data tables have appropriate headers. All complex tables have summaries.

Headings: We have applied headings across the site to break up content appropriately.

Links: We have provided descriptive link names so that you know what they do and make sense out of context. We have applied hidden text to let you know when a link opens a new window/tab.

ARIA Landmarks: We have used this sparingly and generally only use role=”main” around the main content of the page. We have also used role=”complimentary” to help divide content.

Use of ARIA: as we have a dynamic site, we have used various ARIA roles, properties and states to enhance your experience and get the information you need to make informed decisions. We recommend you use a modern browser with a modern screen reader to take advantage of these features.

Use of Javascript: We use this across our site and have used it to manipulate some accessibility features to give you a better experience. Leaving Javascript on is recommended for a better experience.

Calendar: Once in a calendar, use the up, down left and right arrows to move through the dates.

Flexible dates grid: You will see this when you search for a flight with flexible dates. Once on the grid you can use the arrow keys to go to different dates. This will allow you to select dates that suit your timings/budget.

Terms and Conditions: For keyboard users there is additional instruction which display on the screen.

ARIA Application Role: We are aware of an issue where using role=”application” and tabbing out of it means that the previous link is also read out with the link that has the focus. This appears to happen in two places:

1. In Manage Your Booking, when any options (e.g.the excess baggage) are disabled there is a custom tooltip. This tooltip has role=”application” to make it keyboard accessible.
2. On content pages where we have a custom calendar has role=”application” to make it keyboard accessible. The next element in the tab order is a link “mobile enabled” but reads the previous tool tip first (e.g. “flight number help”).

A ticket within the NVDA community(opens an external website) has been created to help resolve this issue.

Check Box status: NVDA does not announce the initial change in status (checked/unchecked) on the booking widget that appears when you navigate towards the bottom home page. On subsequent changes (checking and unchecking) the status is announced by NVDA.

Forms mode: Within the booking a flight widget, when removing an airport using the delete option, the focus is returned to the form field but NVDA does not automatically enter forms mode. Therefore if you try to start typing immediately it will not input any information. If you manually enters forms mode, this works as normal.