Accessibility statement

Updated 1st March 2023

Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to www.forestryengland.uk

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.  We want our website to work for everyone and we have been working hard to make it easier to use and easier to understand.

We also aim to meet appropriate industry standards and guidelines, including the Double-A level of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1. These guidelines explain how to make web content more accessible for all users.

This means 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
  • 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)

Compatibility

This site has been built using code compliant with W3C standards for HTML and CSS.

Our website has been tested with the JAWS screen reader and should function correctly on a range of mobile devices (Android and iOS) and in the following browsers:

  • Firefox
  • Chrome
  • Internet Explorer
  • Safari

Where areas of our website may not be reasonably compatible with some assistive technologies we aim to provide an alternative format for the content. For example, where we use interactive maps we have also provided content listings as an alternative.

Some areas of the website require you to have JavaScript turned on to work correctly.

Media

Our video content is provided through YouTube.

Where possible we provide audio captions and transcripts for spoken content within our videos.

YouTube provides tools for managing closed captions and audio transcripts on your device.

How accessible this website is

This website is mostly compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. The non-compliances and exemptions are listed below.

  • We do not yet provide audio descriptions for our video content.
  • We have not yet tested our website with speech input technologies.
  • Some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • Links do not always clearly explain where they will take the user, although this is not the case for content produced after April 2021

We aim to fix the accessibility problems, where resources enable us to do so, by August 2023

We have trained content creators to understand accessibility guidelines and how they impact on content creation.

Content that’s 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 23 August 2021.  This website was last tested in April and August 2021 by Government Digital Services. 

The previous review in 2020 was carried out by staff at Forestry England using the guidelines “Doing a basic accessibility check if you cannot do a detailed one”

Reporting accessibility problems with this service

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of our website. If you find any problems that aren’t 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).

Feedback and contact info

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.