Accessibility

Where we stand

NCS Live is partly conformant. We can point at specific things that do not yet meet the standard, and they are listed further down with the dates we expect to close them. We do not describe the product as universally designed, because it is not there yet.

This statement is voluntary. Norwegian law requires a published accessibility statement of public bodies, and the central register those live in is not open to private companies, so this page is ours. It was last assessed on 29 September 2026.

Which rules apply

As a website offering a service to the general public in Norway, NCS Live is covered by the regulation on universal design of ICT (FOR-2013-06-21-732). That sets the floor at WCAG 2.0, levels A and AA, minus the three audio description criteria, so 35 success criteria in total.

A public body is held to more: 48 criteria drawn from WCAG 2.1, and a published statement of its own. We have assessed this product against that larger public-sector set rather than our own smaller one, because the useful question is not whether we clear our bar. It is whether a directorate could adopt this and still write an honest statement about it.

What we fixed in this round

A review in September found problems across contrast, text size, keyboard use and navigation. The substantial ones are now fixed: panels that sat directly on the moving map, and so had no reliable contrast at all, now have an opaque surface. Keyboard focus is visible again on every form control, after a CSS rule had been silently cancelling it. The detail panel takes focus when you select something, which matters because search is the only keyboard route to objects drawn in the map canvas. Both dialogs now trap focus and close on Escape. Form fields have real labels. There is a skip link, the map pages have a main landmark, and one navigation now covers every part of the site in both languages.

A second pass followed. Every animation loop on the map now answers to Lite mode, including several that used to ignore it, and the 3D wellbore stops rotating when your system asks for reduced motion and has a pause button either way. The site no longer reloads itself when a new version ships; it offers you a button instead. Short screens keep their controls, because the layer list, the alert drawer, the contact card and the Europe legend each have a measured maximum height now, and the two large legends collapse. There are stylesheets for Windows high-contrast mode and for printing. And the last of the text under 12 pixels went up, including chart labels written as SVG attributes, which every earlier sweep had missed because they are attributes rather than styles.

What is still wrong

These are the gaps we know about. Each one is real, and none of them is fixed by the work above.

• Objects on the map cannot be reached by keyboard. The map is drawn in a canvas, so the roughly 685 selectable objects have no elements to move focus to. Search reaches many of them by name, but six kinds are missing from the search index entirely, including wellbores and coral. This fails WCAG 2.1.1, level A. We are extending the search index first, then building a keyboard list of what is currently in view. Expected in the first quarter of 2027.
• Some map text lives only in the canvas. Operator badges, survey codes, cable names and the value counter are drawn as pixels, so they cannot be selected, enlarged by browser text zoom, translated or read aloud. This fails WCAG 1.1.1 and 1.4.4. Same fix and the same date as above.
• The map interface is in English on the Norwegian route. The written pages are properly Norwegian. The map chrome is not, and we would rather say so than mark an English interface as Norwegian, which would mislead a screen reader into reading it aloud in the wrong language. Expected in the first half of 2027.
• A few chart labels are still under 12 pixels. Axis ticks on a handful of charts sit at 10 to 11 pixels. In each case the label repeats a figure that is also written out in full beside it, so nothing is available only at that size. Being reduced through the rest of 2026.
• Parts of this are untested rather than known good. Our September review measured contrast and read the code. We have not yet completed end-to-end testing with NVDA or VoiceOver, at 200 per cent zoom, or in Windows forced-colours mode. Booked for the fourth quarter of 2026.

Things that are deliberate

The map animates: vessels move, pipelines show estimated flow, export cables show which way power is running. If that is distracting, or if your device struggles with it, Lite mode in the Layers panel turns the animation down, and since the September pass that covers every loop on the map rather than most of them. It switches itself on if your system asks for reduced motion. One thing deliberately keeps moving: the clock in the masthead. It stands next to the word LIVE, and a clock frozen at the moment you opened the page would be saying something untrue.

The map is also a single full-screen instrument rather than a document that reflows. The panels around it do reflow, and the written pages, the field pages and the reports carry the same information as ordinary text.

Tell us what is broken

If something here stops you using the site, we would like to hear it, and a specific report is worth more than a general one. Write to andreas@smpl.no. We aim to reply within five working days.

In Norway, the Authority for Universal Design of ICT supervises these rules, and you can take a complaint to them at uutilsynet.no.

More about the product, its sources and its limits: about NCS Live. På norsk: tilgjengelighetserklæring.