The Government Digital Service is committed to making its websites 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.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
- Images on some pages do not always have suitable image descriptions - users of assistive technologies may not have access to information conveyed in images, this fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 - Non-text Content
- Some pages have duplicate titles, which may make it difficult for users to orient themselves and find the right content - this fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.2, Page Titled
- Many documents are in less accessible formats, like PDF - non-HTML documents published on or after 23 September 2018 must have an accessible format
- Some of our online forms may not meet the following WCAG 2.1 AA criteria:
- non-text content – button’s missing descriptive value or text label - 1.1.1
- info and relationships – page landmarks not identified - 1.1.3
- info and relationships – caption attribute incorrectly used within - 1.3.1
- identify input purpose - autocomplete attribute not present - 1.3.5
- low non-text contrast - 1.4.11
- no keyboard trap - user unable to navigate full page with keyboard - 2.1.1 and 2.1.2
- timing adjustable – no mechanism present to turn-off or extend page time-out - 2.2.1
- focus visible - focus does not remain consistently visible - 2.4.7
- on input – tab focus returns to top of page when radio button is selected - 3.2.2
- loading overlays should be labelled with aria-live - 4.1.3
PDFs and non-HTML documents
Many of our older documents are not accessible in a number of ways including missing text alternatives and missing document structure. We'll improve these as much as possible, so they are accessible.
Disproportionate burden
We believe that fixing the accessibility problems with some content would be disproportionate because the relevant platform will be retired soon.
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
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.
Any new PDFs or MS Word documents we publish on our website will meet accessibility standards.
