Accessibility

We are working to ensure our website is accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of technology or ability.

Accessibility features

Plain English

We try to write in plain English and avoid jargon where possible. If you don’t understand something, please let us know.

Heading structures

The site uses simple heading structures which should make it easier to navigate, especially for people with screen readers.

Web standards

We try our best to comply with code standards such as those relating to CSS and HTML, and W3C WAI guidelines (External link – Opens in a new tab or window).

Links

To notify screen reader users, we’re currently adding icons to all our document links which open in a new window or to other websites. The icon also has hidden content for screen readers which state that links open in new windows and if they link to different websites.

Forms

The embedded forms used on this website are fully accessible to screen readers.

Documents

New documents we publish should be fully accessible.

However, we know that some of our older documents are not accessible.  For example, some of them:

  • are not marked up in a way that allows screen reader users to understand them
  • are not tagged up properly, for example they do not contain proper headings
  • are not written in plain English

Some of these are historic documents and are not essential to providing our services.  These types of documents are exempt from the regulations and we do not currently have any plans to make them accessible.  However more recent documents are being updated to make them as accessible as possible.

Sometimes this can’t be done. If you need a document in a different format, please contact us and we will do our best to provide it.

The following applies to desktop and laptop computers, but not tablets or mobiles.

PDF documents: most computers will show these automatically. If you need the software, you can download the free PDF reader from the Adobe website (External link – Opens in a new tab or window).

Multimedia content

Our website’s videos are embedded via the website YouTube. Due to this, some accessibility features may not be available, which is beyond our control. Visit the YouTube help pages (External link – Opens in a new tab or window) for information on accessing videos with screen readers.

Embedded content

Our website uses content embedded from other websites. This may reduce accessibility when trying to access content directly via keyboards or screen reader technology. If this issue affects you, please contact us so that we can help where possible, and fix any problems.