Website accessibility statement

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.

• making your mouse easier to use
• use your keyboard instead of a mouse
• talk to your device
• make your device talk to you
• make text larger
• change your colours
• magnify the screen

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:

• email: corporatecomms@southyorks.pnn.police.uk
• post : Carbrook House, Carbrook Hall Road, Sheffield, S9 2DB

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 the month and year filter option for the news and appeals page. This fails WCAG 2.1.1 success criterion (keyboard). In July 2023, we will begin the process of moving to a new website, part of Single Online Home, which we expect will fully resolve this issue. It is advised the new website will be live in March 2024.

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). In July 2023, we will begin the process of moving to a new website, part of Single Online Home, which we expect will fully resolve this issue. It is advised the new website will be live in March 2024.

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). In July 2023, we will begin the process of moving to a new website, part of Single Online Home, which we expect will fully resolve this issue. It is advised the new website will be live in March 2024.

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). In July 2023, we will begin the process of moving to a new website, part of Single Online Home, which we expect will fully resolve this issue. It is advised the new website will be live in March 2024.

All images on the site should contain alt text. Following a scan of the site, all affected images were updated to include alt text, with a meaningful description. Regular dip sampling will be undertaken to check this continues on all new content added to the site.

A review of PDFs and word documents has been undertaken to fix issues such as a lang attribute, tagging PDfs as accessible for screen readers and including ALT text where needed. The word documents and PDFs published on the site should now be accessible and meet the relevant WCAG criterion. Regular dip sampling will be undertaken to check this continues on all new content added to the site.

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.

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 have started the process of moving onto Single Online Home. Development of our new website begins in July 2023, and we have been advised the site will be live in March 2024. 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 and updated on 30 April 2023 to reflect a review undertaken to assess published PDFs and word documents to ensure accessibility.

It was previously updated to reflect changes made to the cookie controls on the site, which now allows users to navigate to accept / reject cookies using the keyboard tab and that ALT text is now included on images across the site and videos without a title attribute have been re-embedded to resolve the issue.

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.