At St. Francis Credit Union, we are committed to integrating sustainability into our governance and operational processes.
By upholding ethical practices and ensuring transparency, we aim to build trust and accountability with our members and stakeholders.
Our approach to sustainable governance is rooted in our operating principles, which has central values of equality, equity, and mutual self-help.
Membership in the credit union is voluntary and open to all within the accepted common bond of association. This inclusivity allows all who can use its services and accept the responsibilities to join.
Credit union members enjoy equal voting rights (one member, one vote) and participate in decisions affecting the credit union. This democratic approach ensures that our operations are controlled by our members.
Any permanent equity capital in the credit union receives limited dividends, maintaining a focus on fair distribution.
To encourage thrift and provide loans and other member services, a fair rate of interest is paid on savings and deposits, within the credit union’s capabilities.
Surplus funds, after ensuring appropriate reserve levels and paying dividends, benefit all members. This surplus may be distributed as interest refunds or used for improved services.
We are non-discriminatory regarding race, nationality, sex, religion, and politics. Decisions are based on member needs, economic factors, and sound management principles.
Our services aim to improve the economic and social well-being of all members, prioritising their needs over maximising surpluses.
We actively promote education for our members, officers, employees, and the public on the principles of credit unions, including responsible lending and sound investment.
We cooperate with other credit unions and co-operatives locally, nationally, and internationally to serve our members’ interests and foster the co-operative sector.
We seek to bring about human and social development, extending our services to all who need and can use them. Decisions are made with the broader community’s interests in mind.
Transparency is key to our sustainability efforts. We will regularly publish detailed reports that track our progress and outline future goals for each of our four sustainability pillars.
We have established a range of compliance policies, which will be reviewed to incorporate sustainability into our daily operations and decision-making. This includes policies for risk, investment, recruitment, and procurement – all critical to our sustainability goals’ success.
Our governance and transparency efforts will include ongoing policy reviews and regular publications, including annual and sustainability reports.
| Goal | Progress |
|---|---|
| Form an Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) sustainability committee. | ESG committee established in 2023. |
| Incorporate climate risk in all risk management policies. | Completed in 2024. |
| Implement new and amended policies to include sustainability in decision-making. | Ongoing |
| Ensure sustainability is a regular agenda item at board meetings. | Commenced in June 2023. |
| Publish Sustainability Reports | Planned for FY 2024. |
St. Francis Credit Union
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email info@stfranciscu.ie
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please contact us at info@stfranciscu.ie or call us on 065 6828305.
