Accessibility Statement for Forestry England
This accessibility statement applies to https://www.forestryengland.uk/. It does not cover the https://volunteer.forestryengland.uk/, https://consult.forestryengland.uk/, https://esales.forestryengland.uk/, https://subscribe.forestryengland.uk/ and https://boxoffice.forestryengland.uk/ subdomains.
This website is run by Forestry England. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, this means that if needed, you should be able to:
- change colours, contrast levels and fonts.
- zoom in up to 400% without the text spilling off the screen and without content being truncated or overlapping.
- navigate most of the website using just a keyboard.
- navigate most of the website 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 if you have a disability.
How accessible this website is
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible. These are detailed below.
Issues affecting screen reader users
- Some images have “alt” text that is a literal description of the image. When these images are links, the link destination cannot be identified.
- It is difficult to interact with the cookie popup when using JAWS or NVDA screen readers.
- The purpose of some “Find out more” and “Book now” links is ambiguous because they have no context.
- When the forms are submitted with invalid data, error messages are displayed but they are not announced automatically.
Issues affecting people with low vision
- Audio descriptions have not been provided for some videos, so some or all visual content cannot be accessed.
- Many combinations of text and background colours do not have sufficient colour contrast.
- Some pages display badly when the browser zoom level is increased. Sometimes words break and wrap onto multiple lines or are truncated.
Issues affecting people who use keyboard navigation
- The focus state of many links and buttons is only conveyed by colour, so it can be difficult to tell which link or button has focus.
Issues affecting people who use voice recognition software
- In the forms, it is not possible to target the inputs by name. It is necessary to use other methods such as “mousegrid” or “click textbox”.
- It is not possible to target some image links by name because their name is not what it appears to be. It is necessary to use other methods such as “mousegrid”, “click link” or “click button”.
Issues affecting people who are deaf or have impaired hearing
- Captions have not been provided for some videos, so the audio content cannot be accessed.
Feedback and contact information
We welcome feedback on all aspects of the website.
If you have any thoughts, comments or suggestions to help us improve please get in touch.
Reporting accessibility problems with this website
We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact us at website.support@forestryengland.uk.
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).
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Forestry England 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 and exemptions listed below.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible, for the reasons detailed.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
- Captions have not been provided for some videos. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.2 (Captions (Pre-recorded)).
- Audio descriptions have not been provided for some videos. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.3 (Audio Description or Media Alternative (Pre-recorded)) and 1.2.5 (Audio Description (Pre-recorded)).
- In the forms, some form controls are not labelled. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships).
- The purpose of some “Find out more” and “Book now” links are ambiguous because they have no context. On some pages, multiple “Get directions” links point to different destinations. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 (Link Purpose (In Context)).
- Some links and buttons have “aria-label” attributes that are different from the visible text, and the visible text is not a substring of the “aria-label” attribute. Also, some images of text are links, but the text in the image is not the same as, or a substring of, the “alt” attribute. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.5.3 (Label in Name).
- Most pages contain HTML validation errors, although few, if any, affect the accessibility. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.1 (Parsing).
- In the forms, none of the <input> and <select> elements are programmatically associated with the corresponding text label, so they do not have an accessible name. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (Name, Role and Value).
- The “autocomplete” attributes are missing from some form fields. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.5 (Identify Input Purpose).
- Many combinations of text and background colours do not have sufficient colour contrast. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.3 (Colour Contrast).
- When forms are submitted with invalid data, error messages are displayed but they are not announced automatically. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.3 (Status Messages).
Content not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
PDFs and other documents
Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs that contain maps of our forests and our forest plans. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.
We aim that any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards, and to update our existing ones where applicable, to make them more accessible.
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on 15 May 2022. It was last reviewed in July 2024.
This website was last tested on 16 April 2022. The test was carried out by Test Partners Ltd.
We followed GOV.UK guidance on deciding how to check the website as follows:
- we used an automated website mapping tool to identify all the pages and documents on the website.
- we identified the subdomains that are out of scope and removed all the pages from the page list.
- we removed all the documents from the list because they are being addressed separately.
- we grouped the remaining pages according to type, such as all the News pages, Blog pages, Articles, Events etc.
- we manually assessed a number of pages from each group to determine the level of consistency within the group and the type of content on those pages.
- we manually assessed all the “unique” pages, such as the home page, to determine the type of content on those pages.
- we identified a minimum representative subset of pages that contain examples of the most common layouts, components and features, including the header and footer, important “unique pages”, pages with text content and data tables, informational images, images of text and video content, interactive elements such as forms, tabbed interfaces, carousels, hide / reveal functionality, maps, interactive timeline, image gallery and content filtering.
- we conducted manual and automated WCAG audits on the representative subset of pages.