For non-urgent police enquiries call 101 or in an emergency always call 999

Website accessibility statement

Date published: 31 March 2023 12:42

Website accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to the South Yorkshire Police website (www.southyorks.police.uk)

This website is run by South Yorkshire Police. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 300 per cent without the text spilling off the screen
  • 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:

  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • parts of our website are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • you cannot modify visual content such font size, spacing or colours on images
  • some areas of our website have a poor colour contrast
  • some images on the website do not contain alternative text
  • some downloadable documents (PDF / word documents) aren’t fully accessible to screen reader software
  • some areas of our site are not fully accessible using screen readers or assistive technology
  • screen readers or assistive technology may have difficulty navigating hyperlinks in certain areas of our website

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 20 days.

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 corporatecomms@southyorks.pnn.police.uk

It would be helpful if your email contained the following:

  • The URL(s)(web address) of the page(s) you are having difficulties with
  • How you are accessing the site, for example on your phone, on a laptop, on a tablet
  • If on a laptop or table, which browser you are using, for example Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome or Safari
  • The nature of your disability, if any
  • A description of the problem

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 are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

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

Compliance statement

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

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Users are unable to use their keyboard tab to access all content and functionality on our web pages, including to the exit button on the cookies notice and the month and year filter option for the news and appeals page. This fails WCAG 2.1.1 success criterion (keyboard). An updated cookie control has been purchased, which will allow the exit button on the cookies notice to be resolved - the implementation has experienced a slight delay, and we now expect completion by 3 April 2023. With the remaining issues, we are in the process of working towards development of a new website, which will be in place in the final quarter of 2023. We fully expect this issue to be resolved at that time.

Users are unable to effectively navigate a web page in an order that makes sense. Keyboard navigation should reflect a navigation sequence that is consistent with the meaning of content. The tab focus goes straight to the ‘How can we help?’ search bar, and on expanding the hamburger menu, keyboard focus does not immediately go to the sub menu options. Users have to tab through the whole page before getting them. This fails WCAG 2.4.3 success criterion (focus order). We are in the process of working towards development of a new website, which will be in place in the final quarter of 2023. We fully expect this issue to be resolved at that time.

Some areas of the website do not have a visible focus. When an item is selected, it should have a visible focus, such as a box outlining it, to show where you are on the website. On the hamburger menu, the drop down arrow to expand the section does not have a visible focus when using the keyboard tab to navigate. Also when the user tabs from the URL, the keyboard tabs through the hamburger menu even though it is closed. This fails WCAG 2.4.7 success criterion (focus visible). We are in the process of working towards development of a new website, which will be in place in the final quarter of 2023. We fully expect this issue to be resolved at that time.

Elements of the website have poor colour contrast, which makes it difficult for someone with sight loss to see the content properly. On the external site for ‘Say thanks for a job well done’ form, the green ‘submit’ button with white text fails, and the light grey placeholder text in the inputs fails. On the news and appeals page, the grey year filter text fails on white and the light grey placeholder text on the neighbourhood search box fails. This fails WCAG 1.4.3 success criterion (contrast minimum). We are continuing to work through and update  the website. We aim to have this issue fixed by May 2023.

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 1.1.1 success criterion (non-text content). We plan to add text alternatives for all images by end of March 2023. When we publish new content, we will make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Some image alt text does not contain a meaningful description or is the same as the image file name. This fails WCAG 1.1.1 success criterion (non-text content). We are continuing our review of all images and aim to have meaningful ALT text on all images by end March 2023.

On some pages, PDF document titles are blank. This fails WCAG 2.4.2 success criterion (page titled).

Some PDFs do not contain a lang attribute to allow screen readers to identify the language used on the page. This fails WCAG 3.1.1 success criterion (language of page).

Figures and images in some PDFs and word documents do not contain alt text. This fails WCAG 1.1.1 success criterion (non-text content).

Some PDFs have not been tagged as accessible for screen readers. This fails WCAG 1.3.1 success criterion (info and relationships).

We are undertaking a review of all PDFs on the site to review and fix the issues highlighted above. We aim to have these fixed or removed by May 2023.

Some embedded videos on the website do not contain a title attribute. This fails WCAG 2.1 A 2.4.1 success criterion (bypass blocks). As part of a full website review, we will testing the videos across the website and re-embedding with a title. We aim to have this completed by end March 2023.

Some tables in word documents do not have identifiable row and column headers. This fails WCAG 2.1 A F91 success criterion (not correctly marking up headers).

Some word documents on the site contain a non-inline graphic or object. This fails WCAG 1.3.2 success criterion (meaningful sequence).

We are undertaking a review of all word documents used on the site to review and fix the issues highlighted above. We aim to have these fixed or removed by May 2023.

Disproportionate burden

We have not identified anything that qualifies as a disproportionate burden.

Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFS or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services.

The issues with the current published PDFs and word documents from September 2018 onwards are in the process of being reviewed and updated to ensure they meet accessibility standards. We anticipate by May 2023 all documents with issues will be corrected.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility requirements.

What we are doing to improve accessibility

We have been successful in resolving a number of previous issues with the website, however further work is required to meet the necessary standards. We will continue to review and fix the outstanding issues where we are able to do so.

We are in the process of working towards development of a new website, which will be in place in the final quarter of 2023. We fully expect a number of the outstanding issues to be resolved at that time.

Should you require an accessible version of any document currently published on the website, please contact corporatecomms@southyorks.pnn.police.uk to request it.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared and published on 23 February 2023. It was reviewed on 23 March 2023 to reflect a further delay to the new cookie-control being implemented. This is now expected to be complete by 31 March 2023.

The statement will be further revised when this update is completed.

This website was last tested on 23 February 2023 by Government Digital Service – an earlier test was conducted by the GDS in September 2022. They have published information about how they sample and choose pages for simplified testing.

They test pages using a combination of automated accessibility tools and manual tests. They currently use an automated tool called Axe.

Automated testing does not find all accessibility issues. The GDS also do manual tests including:

  • Tabbing through each page without a mouse
  • Viewing the page at different zoom settings
  • Simulating viewing the page on a small screen

These manual tests find issues such as keyboard functionality, visibility of keyboard focus and reflow which are some of the most common barriers to users with accessibility needs and are not likely to be picked up in automated tests.

The test on 22 February 2023 was carried out by S:EightyEighty using a tool called SortSite - the scan is run against WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines.

SortSite scans each page of the website by running checkpoints, then examines the page for unscanned pages, and repeats this process until all pages have been scanned for issues.

The resulting report identifies each issue by category with a summary of standards compliance status, providing a link to the issue.

Manual testing will be undertaken by end March 2023, through the most popular pages to consider all user journeys. This statement will be further updated following this testing.