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Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to the Citizens Advice website.

This website is run by Citizens Advice. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. You should be able to:

  • easily understand our content
  • view images and multimedia - including videos, animations and audio
  • read text with good colour contrast
  • skip to main content using a keyboard

You can find advice on making your device easier to use on the AbilityNet website.

How accessible this website is

We know parts of this website aren’t fully accessible, for example:

  • some pages have poor colour contrast
  • some labels and error messages aren’t clear what they relate to
  • some buttons aren’t correctly identified
  • some pages and forms don’t work well when zoomed in
  • some pages and forms can’t be accessed or navigated with a keyboard
  • some links don’t have useful text or you can only tell they’re links because of what colour they are
  • navigation isn’t consistent

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, you can ask by using the link at the end of each page. We'll consider your request and get back to you.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, you can tell us about them with the link at the end of each 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).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

We provide a textphone service for people who can’t hear or speak on the phone. You can find out more about textphone on the Relay UK website.

You can check if your nearest Citizens Advice has an audio induction loop. You should also check if we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter before your visit. Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Citizens Advice 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.

Non-accessible content

The content listed in this section is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Colour

We fail guideline ‘1.4 Distinguishable’ of the WCAG 2.1 AA standard because:

  • this website doesn’t meet the contrast requirement of 3:1 against a white background for interactive elements or form controls
  • some pages use colour to show what they mean

We’re redesigning our website and will start to use these designs in early 2024.

We’ll remove the social sharing toolbar.

Forms

We fail guidelines ‘1.3 Adaptable’, ‘2.1 Keyboard accessible’, ‘2.4 Navigable’ and ‘3.3 Input assistance’ of the WCAG 2.1 AA standards because:

  • many of the forms can’t be used with just a keyboard or keyboard interface
  • some form fields are missing labels which can make it difficult to tell which field to complete
  • dynamic content isn’t properly marked up so assistive technology users won’t know the content has changed
  • error messages don’t tell people using assistive technology if there’s an error

In 2021, we’ll start to review how all forms and interactive elements are implemented.

We’re redesigning our website and we started to use these designs in early 2021.

Compatibility

We fail guideline ‘4.1 Compatible’ of the WCAG 2.1 AA standards because some HTML and ARIA markup includes invalid attributes.

We’re migrating to a new Content Management System which will address this issue.

Navigation

We fail guideline ‘1.4 Distinguishable’ of the WCAG 2.1 AA standards because:

  • items within the navigation menu can’t be closed with the ‘Esc’ key.
  • the navigation bar text reflows when zooming in on text on old pages, but the blue bar doesn’t get bigger and makes the text unreadable

We started using new navigation in 2021.

Keyboard access

We fail guidelines ‘2.1 Keyboard accessible’ and ‘2.4 Navigable’ of the WCAG 2.1 AA standards because:

  • several of the tools can’t be accessed or navigated with the keyboard
  • the side navigation on some pages isn’t in a logical order and won’t let you select a link using a keyboard
  • some pages have buttons with incorrect markup that affects how they work with assistive technology

We’ll make the navigation and buttons accessible by early 2024.

Links

We fail guidelines ‘1.4.1 Use of color’ and ‘2.4.4 Link purpose (in context)’ of the WCAG 2.1 AA standards.

Some pages have links that are only distinguished from plain text by colour. This is worse for heading links on index pages, as there’s no way to tell which is a link.

We’re redesigning our website and will start to use these designs in early 2024.

Data visualisations

We fail guideline ‘1.4.3 Colour Contrast’ of the WCAG 2.1 AA standard in our ‘policy research section’ because:

  • some colour contrasts aren’t accessible - for example, our pie charts and line charts

We’re using a third party service to show data visualisations in our ‘policy research section’. Some graphs or charts won’t meet accessibility standards because:

  • data points can’t be navigated using a keyboard
  • visualisations don’t have screen reader descriptions
  • visualisations don’t have screen-readable popups
  • visualisations don’t have reduced motion animations

We're working to make information more accessible and plan to make an accessible colour palette by July 2024.

If you need our data visualisations in a different format you can download the data as a CSV file or contact us for more information.

Disproportionate burden

‘Disproportionate burden’ means content that would take a lot of time or money to fix, but wouldn’t make it much easier to use.

We’re planning to fix all the problems we’ve found, so this section doesn’t apply to us.

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

Not applicable for this statement as we plan to fix all accessibility issues.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We’re currently moving to a new Content Management System - this will fix a lot of the issues we’ve described. After that, we’ll get an external audit of the site.

We’ve also developed a process to make sure we meet accessibility standards from now on.

1. Accessibility checks for all development releases

We’ll check all new content, designs and development meets accessibility standards.

2. Regular quality assurance (QA) testing with an accessibility focus

As we design, build and update the site, we will regularly do audits and QA testing to make sure we don’t add new barriers.

3. Including disabled people and people with long term health conditions in every round of research

During the early stages of development, we’ll make sure people with access needs are included in the research.

We’ll run usability testing with advisers and volunteers who work for Citizens Advice and we’ll use our Disability Network Group to recruit participants.

When we recruit external participants for usability testing, we’ll make sure people with access needs are included in this.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 23 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 20 November 2023.

This website was last tested from December 2019 to January 2020. We carried out the testing internally.

We used the Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM) approach to deciding on a sample of pages to test.