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Accessibility

This accessibility statement applies to the Royal Navy website at https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk

This website is run by the Royal Navy

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • Zoom in up to 200% without the text spilling off the screen

  • Navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • Listen to most of the website using a screen reader

  • Turn on captions for most videos throughout the site (hosted on YouTube)

  • Skip to the main content, on most pages, using access keys

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • Some of our interactive maps are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard (Recent Deployments – homepage)

  • Favourites bar (displayed briefly after favouriting an item) is not accessible using the keyboard

  • Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software

  • Not all images and links on the site have alt text

  • Some pages within the Features section do not have working skip-to-main-content links

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, please contact us via the methods set out on our contact page here.  

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

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, contact us here.

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

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

Non-Accessible Content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content). We plan to retroactively add text alternatives for all images as well as when we publish new content.

Many link buttons do not use descriptive text so the purpose of the link is not always obvious. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 (Link Purpose, in context). We plan on carrying out an audit to determine how many link buttons are affected and implementing a suitable plan to resolve the issue.

Tabbing (keyboard navigation and focus) isn't very clear on some newer components on the Homepage. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.1 (Keyboard).

Disproportionate burden

It is not possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping. We have assessed the effort required to resolve the issues when changing text size and line height. The perceived impact to website users is low and we believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations.

Most issues caused by this can be overcome by setting your desired levels before the page loads.

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 with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By December 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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. For example, we do not plan to 'fix sample-pdf-brochure.pdf'.

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

What we are doing to improve accessibility

Our accessibility roadmap shows how and when we plan to improve accessibility on this website.

  • September to October 2020 – Conducting new tests
  • October to December 2020 – Resolution of findings and repeat of tests
  • January 2021 – Updating statement and continued programme of testing and fixing

In the past year we have fixed a large amount of non-compliances, including but not limited to:

  • Missing or incorrect form labels
  • Improving keyboard navigation and focus states
  • Colour contrast issues
  • Form validation error message issues

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on Wednesday 23rd September 2020. It was last reviewed on Wednesday 23rd September 2020.

This website was last tested on Monday 21st September 2020. The test was carried out by Great State.

In order to decide what to test we used a sample of page templates and components from a cross-section of the website that represent key user journeys.