National Historic Ships UK is committed to providing inclusive digital communications to ensure that our website, digital content and online services are accessible to as many people as possible and meet their diverse user needs.

We believe that accessibility should be regarded as a continual work in progress and we will work to review and improve our digital communications on an ongoing basis. We also follow best practice to meet a minimum level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0.

Accessibility statement for nationalhistoricships.org.uk

This website is run by National Historic Ships UK. 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% 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.

How accessible this website is

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

  • Some of our pages are incorrectly titled
  • There is descriptive text missing on some of our labels and headers
  • There is missing alt text on some links and images
  • Some of our images have text that is not meaningful
  • There is descriptive text missing on images used as links
  • Some of our labels are duplicated on page

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

Email info@nationalhistoricships.org.uk. if:

  • you cannot access the information you need on our websites and would like to request it in an alternative format (like accessible PDF, large print or easy read)
  • you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations
  • you would like to ask anything or tell us anything about the accessibility of our websites

We're always looking to improve the accessibility of this website and we welcome your feedback. We will consider your request and try respond to you within 21 days.

Find further detail on how to get in touch with us via our Contact Us page.

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).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

National Historic Ships UK is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

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.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

  • Unable to access menu through tabbed navigation or select date on calendar on webforms. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.1 (keyboard).
  • It is not possible to close the search bar in the main header using the keyboard only. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.1.2 (no keyboard traps).
  • Descriptive labels are missing in web forms. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.3.3 (labels and instructions)
  •  Images missing alt text. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).
  • There is descriptive text missing from images used as links. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 (link purpose) and 4.1.2.(role, name value)
  • Images have unmeaningful text. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content)
  • Pages have duplicate labels This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1.( info and relationships)
  • Pages are incorrectly titled. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.2 (page titled)

Non compliance with the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).

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 Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Live video

Live video streams do not have captions. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4 (captions - live).

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

How we tested this website

Our website was last tested on 3rd September 2020. The test was carried out by Axis 12 and involved a full automated scan of every page of the site using Sitemorse. Over 2000 pages were tested and a report produced which provides a prioritised roadmap allowing us to work towards full compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA standards.

You can read the full accessibility test report and results https://secure.sitemorse.com/summary-access.html?id=1469375872

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Using the test report we can now plan to improve accessibility on this website. We will continually work with our web developer to ensure any additions to our website meet the correct standards.

We are also:

  • rolling out accessibility training to staff who create web content
  • raising general accessibility awareness across our organisation

This statement was prepared on 21st September 2020. It was last updated on 21st September 2020.