Accessibility Statement

Using this website

This statement applies to content published on judiciary.uk which is run by the Judicial Office. 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

New documents we publish should be fully accessible. However, we know that some of our documents are not accessible. For example:

  • PDF documents (published before 23 September 2018) may not be fully accessible to screen reader software.
  • In addition, there are a small number of PDFs published after 23 September 2018, including Coroner’s reports to prevent future deaths, which may not be fully accessible.

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:

email: website.enquiries@judicary.uk
phone: 020 7073 4734
write to: Judicial Website Team, Judicial Office, Thomas More Building, Royal Courts of Justice, Strand, London, WC2A 2LL

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

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: website.enquiries@judicary.uk setting out the issues you are experiencing and links to the page(s) affected.

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

The Judicial 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 exemptions listed below.

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

The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we do not plan to fix judgments, sentencing remarks or orders published prior to October 2017.

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

Embedded videos hosted on YouTube and other media players include non-accessible elements that are native to the video platform. For example, this means buttons to play videos are not descriptive enough for screen reader users as the context of the video is not clear. This fails WCAG 2.4.6 AA (Headings and Labels).

Disproportionate burden

Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software. Our website contains a large number of PDFs created in previous years, for example judgments, annual reports and speeches.

We do not intend to recreate documents in accessible versions as this would be a disproportionate burden. As set out above the accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. With the exception of a small number of Coroner’s reports to prevent future deaths PDFs published after this date should be accessible.

The decision not to update all PDFs takes into account the fact that there are hundreds of historic documents created on judiciary.uk and each document would require a number of hours of work to be recreated in a fully accessible version. Interest in these documents is relatively low as few people access them and requests for accessible versions of these documents are extremely rare. Judgments are available in HTML, through the National Archives find case law website.

We consider that the costs of converting documents where there is little evidence of demand would be a poor use of limited staff time and would represent a disproportionate burden on the organisation in terms of cost. We will always assist with requests for our publications to be provided in different formats on a case-by-case basis.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

With the exception of the content not in scope of the regulations cited above the site should be fully compliant with the legislation but we will address any issues identified as part of the next audit we run.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 9 October 2020. It was last reviewed on 21 September 2022.

This website was last tested in May 2021. The test was carried out by Digital Accessibility Centre.

Testing was conducted by a team of disabled individuals, using a range of adaptive technologies and keyboard only on a sample of pages selected for testing which covered different elements of the site.

A further test is scheduled in September 2022.

External links