Accessibility statement for food.gov.uk

This website is run by the Food Standards Agency. 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. You can see a full list of any issues in the Non-accessible content section of this statement.

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: fsa.communications@food.gov.uk 
• Phone our Helpline: 0330 332 7149 (open 9.00 until 17.00, Monday to Friday) 

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:

• Email: fsa.communications@food.gov.uk 
• Phone our Helpline: 0330 332 7149 (open 9.00 until 17.00, Monday to Friday) 

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).

If you are in Northern Ireland and are not happy with how we respond to your complaint you can contact the Equalities Commission for Northern Ireland who are responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’) in Northern Ireland. 

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The Food Standards Agency 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 and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

The content that is not accessible is outlined below with details of planned dates for when issues will be fixed.

Some filter elements do not behave in the expected manner for users of assistive technologies and are not accessible to users that do not use a mouse. (WCAG 2.1 A 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value). We plan to fix this by March 2021. 

PDFs and other non-HTML documents

Some of our PDF documents are not fully accessible, including: 

• Manual for official controls chapters have some issues with URLs, poor images and table of contents. We plan to fix these issues by 5 October 2020.

• Safer food, better business guidance has some issues with colour contrast, font size and form labels. We plan to fix these issues (within a wider continuous improvement project) by September 2021. 

• Safe Catering guidance has some issues including colour contrast, font size, inconsistent tagging order and sideways pages. We plan to fix these issues (within a wider continuous improvement project) by September 2021.

• A Practical Guide for Milk Producers has some issues including images, colour contrast, navigation and bookmarks. We plan to fix these issues by March 2021. 

Some of our Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have forms published as Word documents. We plan to fix these by October 2020. We’re also developing a new service for the meat establishment Approvals process. This new service will meet accessibility standards and we anticipate a completion date of mid-2021.

Disproportionate burden

We have not made any disproportionate burden claims.

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

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.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We plan to identify and fix issues according to the timescales shown for each area above. 

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 21 September 2020.

This website was last tested on 20 July 2020. The test was carried out by Digital Accessibility Centre (DAC)

We selected the sample of pages to test based on common user journeys that also include a wide variety of different content types. This includes accessing guidance, reporting a food problem and accessing food alerts.