Accessibility Statement

Treasure Hunt Tours Ltd is committed to making our games accessible to all users, in accordance with the Equality Act 2010. We strive to ensure that our digital services are inclusive and usable by everyone, including people with disabilities.

This accessibility statement applies to two URLs accessed by treasure hunt participants:

  1. Instructions page - the web page used by treasure hunt participants to read their instructions and join their game. The URL for this page is e.g.
    https://treasurehuntleeds.com/join/{bookingID}
  2. Game web application - the web application that provides the actual treasure hunt experience. The URL for this page is e.g.
    https://play.treasurehuntleeds.com/game/{gameID}

It does not apply to:

Contents

How you should be able to use our game and website

We want as many people as possible to be able to use our game app and website. You should be able to:

We also make the website text as simple as possible to understand.

Our games require one team member with good eyesight

Our games involve navigating around a city centre, following maps based on landmarks and solving cryptic clues by spotting things in the city.

The games require at least one team member to have good eyesight in order to navigate and see answers to clues.

Due to the team-based nature of the game, people without good eyesight can participate as part of a team. Part of the challenge of solving the clues is deciphering the meaning of the clue which does not require good eyesight.

We have built the game to accommodate use with assistive technologies and so we hope that visually impaired people can participate and enjoy the game.

We aim for full wheelchair accessibility

When we started the business we were keen to accommodate wheelchair users.

We are careful when designing the route. We aim to:

Certain features can cause problems for wheelchair users:

We aim to have every game independently reviewed by a wheelchair user. We offer a free game in exchange for an honest review which we publish unedited.

You can see the wheelchair accessibility review for Treasure Hunt York.

Accessibility of our web pages

The Instructions page is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard due to the limited subset of success criteria we tested against. It passes the 23 success criteria we assessed against.

The Game web application is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard due to:

Non-accessible content in the game web application

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Missing image alt tags (Non-text content)

Within our games we use three types of images:

  1. Walking maps - showing a route from where you are to the next clue.
  2. Navigational images - for example an entrance to an alleyway that the player needs to find in order to continue.
  3. Informative images - for example a city’s coat of arms, a reconstruction of an old street, an archive photograph.

Currently these images do not have a text alternative as required by WCAG 1.1.1.

Walking maps and navigational images

These images should have a text alternative that describes that the image is a map or a landmark. We don’t believe it’s proportionate to provide an alternative navigation method given that good eyesight is required to see street names and landmarks in the city itself.

Informative images

This type of image should have a detailed text description. This has been added to our roadmap below.

Inability to skip chat history (Bypass blocks)

As chat messages appear, the page gets longer. If a player reloads the page part-way through a game, there are a lot of historical messages to scroll through in order to reach the most recent one.

WCAG 2.4.1 specifies that a page must provide a keyboard-accessible method to bypass repetitive content. The game page currently fails this criteria and we have added this to our roadmap.

The game is like a WhatsApp chat conversation where messages appear over time at the bottom of the screen.

The focus should automatically shift to each new message as it appears during gameplay. This would ensure that any links within chat messages would be the next item in the tab order.

Following the message, the focus should logically proceed to the “Type your message” input box, and then to the “Send” button.

Testing this behaviour properly would require hiring an experienced screen reader user. We considered it a disproportionate burden.

The game page may be accessible but without testing we consider that it fails WCAG 2.4.3.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 20th August 2024.

To prepare this statement, we carried out a self assessment.

We manually examined the two URLs using the tool Accessibility Insights for Web tool (version 2.44.0, Powered by axe-core 4.9.1).

We used the “Quick Assess” workflow which assesses a subset of WCAG 2.2 A and AA success criteria.

We tested the two URLs against 23 WCAG 2.2 A & AA success criteria:

We did not test against the following WCAG 2.2 success criteria:

At this stage, it would have been a disproportionate burden to assess every WCAG 2.2 AA success criteria given the size and resources of the company.

The statement was last reviewed on 20th August 2024

Improvements we made as a result of this assessment

As we performed the assessment we evaluated whether issues could be fixed immediately or would require more substantial work.

We made the changes detailed below.

Instructions page improvements

After making these changes, the page passed all the Quick Assess success criteria.

Game web application improvements

Roadmap of future improvements

We are committed to making further, larger improvements outlined below:

We welcome your feedback

If you’d like to contact us about any aspect of our accessibility, we would be happy to hear from you.

Please email ahoy@treasurehuntyork.com or phone 01904 500 868.

If we haven’t addressed your concerns

If you experience accessibility issues with our website or game web application and feel that we have not adequately addressed your concerns, you can seek further assistance or advice.

For issues related to accessibility and discrimination, you may contact the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is responsible for enforcing the Equality Act 2010 in England, Scotland, and Wales.

If you need further advice or wish to make a complaint, you can also contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) for assistance.

“We thought the clues were pitched at the correct level, not too easy and made you look very closely at your surroundings, without being impossible to solve.
We had a fun day exploring York with a few pit stops for refreshement between clues.”

—Grendel46, Tripadvisor

Tripadvisor logo with 5.0 rating

156 reviews

 Treasure Hunt York partner

ahoy@treasurehuntyork.com

Telephone: 01904 500 868
Text us: 07380 309380

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Gardens and Guildhalls starts from:
York Observatory, Museum Gardens, York, YO30 7BH

Play our second game in York: Walk the Walls