Accessibility Statement for ACRO Criminal Records Office

How accessible this website is

• There is no facility to change the contrast of each web page
• There is no facility to change the text size of each web page
• There are overlays used on this website, which are not fully accessible
• The main navigation style could be confusing for some visitors
• There are forms on this website that are not possible to use with some types of assistive technology
• Some pages do not respond accurately to navigation with assistive technology such as dictation

Feedback and contact information

We are aware that some people with disabilities may experience difficulties with our website. We are doing everything we can to resolve these issues.

If you find that you are unable to access any information on this website, please contact us using any of the following methods:

• Call our Customer Services team on 023 8047 9920 from the UK or +44 (0)23 8047 9920 internationally
• Follow this link to send us an email: customer.services@acro.police.uk

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

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, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
 

ACRO Criminal Records Office is committed to making its website 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, due to the non-compliances listed below.

• Some of the links on our pages aren’t as descriptive as they could be. This can be difficult for people using a screen reader. This fails WCAG 2.4.4. As outlined in the 'Disproportionate burden' section of our statement, this will be fixed when we upgrade our content management system (CMS) by the end of 2023.
• Some of the forms on our website do not have sufficient labels to explain what input is needed. This would make it difficult for people using a screen reader or for people who have limited motor control. This fails WCAG 1.3.1. As above, this will be fixed by the end of 2023.
• Some of the forms don’t have an accessible name when someone needs to select a certain category. This would make it difficult for people using a screen reader or for people with limited motor control. This fails WCAG 4.1.2. As above, this will be fixed by the end of 2023.

We have carried out a range of improvements to the accessibility of our website. These included the following solutions: We have amended the colour contrast on our webpages to meet the WCAG 1.4.3 standard. When we publish new content, we’ll make sure it meets the same standards.
 

• We have amended the language attribute and will ensure that when we publish new content there is a specific language attributed to the new pages. This  means we are compliant with WCAG 3.1.1.
• We have added alternate text to all images and will ensure that any new images uploaded onto the website meet accessibility standards. This makes us compliant with WCAG 1.1.1.
• We have added titles to documents and will ensure any new documents uploaded onto the website meet accessibility standards. This meets the standards of WCAG 2.4.2.

Disproportionate burden

We believe that implementing solutions to the remaining issues outlined under ‘Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations’, which relate to WCAG 2.4.4, WCAG 1.3.1 and WCAG 4.1.2, would represent a disproportion burden to our organisation.

The main reason for this is that the current version of the content management system (CMS) used for the website comes to an end in 2023. All the changes made will therefore be lost when the CMS is either upgraded or changed.
 
Several of the accessibility issues highlighted are linked via a common solution: the development of a bespoke website wizard to replace the existing wizard for our forms. This will be built into the new CMS.
 
Also within disproportionate burden are the changes required to the online application forms to transfer explanatory text from the current hover box functionality to the body of the online forms themselves. Not all assistive technologies have the ability to recognise hover functionality. The changes would necessitate the forms being redesigned to ensure that they retain their responsive capabilities, while not proving too unwieldly to complete. The forms will be redesigned in a style consistent with Government online forms upon the website’s migration to the new CMS.

The same principle applies to disabling the cascading style sheets (CSS), which control the visual layout of the website. We have been advised that it is not really possible to make the page readable when disabling the CSS. In essence, it would mean rewriting all the HTML code for the website and facilitating it to work in such a manner. Carrying this out retrospectively would take an extremely long time to achieve and would encounter many risks. This element will be accounted for within the next CMS.

The remaining items we deem to be a disproportionate burden should not prevent the consumer from using the ACRO website and accessing the information and products required.

Our website contains a number of PDFs and Word documents. We are working 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^rd September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we do not plan to fix the ACRO annual reports published from 2011 to 2018.

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

This statement was prepared on 19^th June 2022. It was last reviewed and updated on 30^th January 2023.

This website was last tested on 13^th January 2023. The test was carried out by Access by Design using a mixture of manual checking and automatic metric testing.