This accessibility statement applies to the National Trails service on https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/

This website is run by Natural England.

We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • use browser settings or plugins to change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • use browser settings or other software to 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. For example, the following functionality/areas are not currently accessible:

  • For people using only a keyboard, the tab/reading order on PDFs across the site are not correct.
  • People who have low vision or are colour blind will encounter a number of poor colour contrast issues. In particular there are multiple examples of poor colour contrast in the PDFs.
  • People who use screen readers will not be presented with alternative text for a large amount of the website’s media content. There are no audio descriptions provided for videos. Colour has been used solely for conveying information.
  • There are large volumes of images and videos across the website that are uploaded by third parties, and therefore do not have alt text and description text.
  • Link purposes are not always clear within PDFs.
  • Across the site there are various maps, which are provided by a third party, and are also not fully accessible – in particular, there are a vast number of Points of Interest indicators which are difficult to tab through.

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:

You can request a phone call with our team via either of the above options.

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 10 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are working to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page please contact us via email: nationaltrails@naturalengland.org.uk

We will reply to your request within 10 working days.

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).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Natural England 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 not fully 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.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

  • Images do not all contain alternative text, visual controls for playing time-based media and the interactive maps and elevation graphs also do not contain a text alternative. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1. Non-text Content (A). People who are blind or have visual disabilities may not be able to perceive the content.
  • Several examples where pre-recorded videos embedded from a third-party system are not fully accessible. For example:
    • There is a pre-recorded video present for the highlights of a path, but the site does not contain an alternative way of understanding and accessing the content portrayed in the video. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.1 Audio-only and video-only (pre-recorded) (A). People who are deaf or hard of hearing may not be able to perceive the content in pre-recorded audio. People with difficulty perceiving visual content may not be able to perceive the content in pre-recorded video.
    • There is a pre-recorded video containing audio and auto-generated captions that have not been edited and as such, are not an accurate reflection of the content presented in the video. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.2 Captions (Pre-recorded) (A). People with difficulty perceiving visual content may not be able to perceive the content in pre-recorded video. People who are deaf or hard of hearing may not be able to perceive the content. People may have difficulty understanding the meaning of pre-recorded video content.
    • There is a pre-recorded video which does not contain an audio description of the visual content, nor is there a text alternative present to describe this content. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.3 Audio Description or Media Alternative (Pre-recorded) (A). People with visual impairments may not be able to perceive the content in pre-recorded video.
    • Pre-recorded videos embedded in the website do not contain an audio description. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.5 Audio Description (Pre-recorded) (AA). People who are blind or visually impaired may not be able to perceive the content and thus will not receive information present in the pre-recorded video.
    • We currently have a large volume of images and videos across the website, and not all of them have alt text due to being added by third parties and external users.
  • The map contains coloured icons to denote different points of interest but these icons and use of colour to categorise them solely rely on the shapes of the icons and the colours for the categories – there is no text alternative to describe these icons when present on the maps. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.3 Sensory Characteristics (A). People who are blind or visually impaired may not be able to understand the content being conveyed in the manner described. Certain changes to the map are out of our control as the map functionality is provided by a third-party solution.
  • Markings on the navigational maps may solely rely on colour to convey meaning and information regarding specific routes. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.1 Use of Color (A). People who are colour blind may not be able to understand the meaning conveyed by the colour.
  • Resizing the text to 200% causes text to overflow, be cropped from containers and may makes it difficult to read the content due to the way this service has been styled. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.4 Resize text (AA). People, especially partially sighted people, will find it hard to read text because they cannot increase the font size.
  • There are maps and banners included within this service that use images of text rather than text that can be accessed and read out by user agents. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.5 Images of Text (AA). Images of text are hard to read and there is no alternative way to read the text.
  • PDFs uploaded on the site are not currently all accessible:
    • The PDF documents will not reflow because of interactive annotations. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.10 Reflow (AA). People with low vision who need enlarged text will have to scroll to see the whole page or will not be able to read it if the text overlaps other text.
    • The PDFs contain incorrect headings for several of the tables contained in the documents. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.6 Headings and Labels (AA). People with disabilities who may want to scan the document for information may not be able to perceive the content contained in the document and whether it is relevant to them due to the lack of meaningful headings or labels.
  • Links may not communicate that they will open in a new tab, some consistently named links will take users to different locations and some link elements are controls, rather than acting as a hyperlink. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 Link Purpose (In Context) (A). People with visual disabilities will not be able to determine the purpose of a link without exploring the link’s context.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We plan to improve accessibility on this website by:

  • Ensuring existing images, that are not added by third parties, have alt text.
  • Exploring ways of adding alt text to the images added by third parties, although we feel that it would be difficult to ensure that third parties, who have uploaded media items without alt or descriptive text, add the alt or descriptive text to their images and their videos. Due to the large number of media items on the website, more than 18,000, it is unlikely that this will be deliverable in the short term.
  • Ensuring alt text fields are now required fields when adding images to pages, as well as asking third parties to add alt text to the images they have already uploaded.
  • Where possible we will work with our provider to explore other ways the map data can be surfaced on the website so that it can be accessed by all users.
  • Continuing to review and improve the accessibility of PDFs available across the site and to provide the information in an HTML format where possible.
  • Working through the PDFs on our site that are more recent than 23rd September 2018 and any that are essential to providing our services. This is because 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. However, our process also includes identifying the most popular/downloaded PDFs on the website, checking them for accessibility and where required, and where possible, improving their accessibility. We will also provide guidance and require that all new PDFs added to the website are accessible. We are working to fix these issues by mid 2023.
  • Constantly working with our provider to fix any issues on the site when they arise.
  • Retesting the website so that we can continue to improve the website’s accessibility.

We are constantly working on improving accessibility throughout the site, where possible and are fully committed to ensuring that the website is as accessible as it can be. Any future developments across the website will ensure accessibility compliance are taken into account as a starting point.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 20 September 2022. It was last updated on 15 February 2023.

This website was last tested on 3 December 2021. The test was carried out by the Defra Accessibility Team who chose a sample of 11 pages and 2 PDF documents to test as examples of the main page types used to complete a notification.