Accessibility

Accessibility statement for www.police.uk

This accessibility statement applies to www.police.uk.

This website is run by the Single Online Home platform. 

We want everyone to be able to use this website. You might have a better experience if you change the settings on your computer to suit your needs. The site has been built so that you should be able to: 

• change colours, contrast levels and fonts
• zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
• navigate most of the website using just a keyboard or using speech recognition software
• listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We've also made the website text as simple as possible to understand. 

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible.

• When completing the forms across the site, new content is not immediately announced to screen reader software when users select the Next button. Additionally, the purpose of some of the links is not clear from reading the text alone.
• On search results pages the left and right arrows on the pagination navigation do not have a visible keyboard focus style and the purpose of some of the other links may not be clear to screen reader users.
• Some of the link text on the Your Area pages is not underlined and is only distinguished by the use of colour.
• Most older PDF documents aren’t fully accessible to screen readers. However, users can request accessible versions. The optional downloadable PDFs created after users complete any of our forms also aren't yet fully accessible for screen readers.
• Some content on our website is not available unless JavaScript is enabled, for example forms and maps.
• For forces who have live chat, the survey that sometimes appears at the end of the chat will be difficult to use with keyboard navigation.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

If you can't access something you need on this site, please tell us about it and we will get you what you need in another way:

Online using our accessibility form.

By email: [email protected]

To help us understand the problem as quickly as we can, please tell us:

• the web address or title of the page where you found the problem
• what the problem is
• what computer and software you use

Please note:  this mailbox is only for accessibility enquiries. It you want to report crimes or other incidents, use our online crime reporting services. If a crime is happening now or someone is in immediate danger, call 999.

Enforcement Procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

If you are in Northern Ireland and are not happy with how we respond to your complaint you can contact the Equalities Commission for Northern Ireland who are responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’) in Northern Ireland.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Police UK is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Find out more about the technical accessibility standards we follow.

Non accessible content

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

Non compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some of the links in the Your Area pages are not underlined and use colour alone to distinguish them. This doesn’t meet criterion 1.4.1 Use of colour (Level A).

The triage process used in form pages, for example the Contact us and Report a crime pages, include links which do not have a clear purpose from reading the text alone. This doesn’t meet criterion 2.4.4 Link purpose (in context) (Level A).

The purpose of the links in the pagination on the Search page is not clear from reading the link text alone or by reading the link text with programmatically associated link context. This doesn’t meet criterion 2.4.4 Link purpose (in context) (Level A). We aim to fix this issue by 25 May.

On search results pages the left and right arrows on the pagination navigation do not have a visible keyboard focus style. This doesn’t meet success criterion 2.4.7 Focus visible (Level AA).

On all form pages new content is not announced to screen reader software as it loads. This doesn’t meet success criteria 4.1.3 Status Messages (Level AA). We aim to fix this issue by 6 April.

We aim to fix these issues by the end of May 2023, unless otherwise specified.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested, using:

• automated testing – the quickest way to catch 20% to 50% of potential issues
• manual testing – using assistive technology tools to test the website with a social focus on areas with known problems
• user testing – asking users with accessibility needs to test the website, and learning from their feedback

We continually monitor and test the accessibility of our site and have made fixing and improving the accessibility of the site part of our daily work.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 20 September 2019. It was last reviewed on 1 February 2023.

SOH was last tested by an external audit in May 2019. A more limited Government Digital Service audit on SOH was run in October 2022.

We tested the service based on a user's ability to complete key journeys. All parts of the chosen journeys were tested, including documents. Journeys were chosen on a number of factors including usage statistics, risk assessments and subject matter.