Accessibility statement

This site is used by people who are ill, disabled, caring for someone or under real financial pressure. It has to work on a cheap phone, on a bad connection, with a screen reader, and at 200% zoom.

What we have done

• Pages are built from plain HTML and work without JavaScript. The menu, the search box and every link function with scripting turned off.
• Text is large by default and resizes without breaking the layout.
• Colour contrast meets WCAG 2.2 AA for body text and interface elements.
• Everything is reachable with a keyboard, and the focus indicator is always visible.
• Tap targets are at least 44 by 44 pixels.
• Headings are used in order, so a screen reader can navigate a page properly.
• Tables scroll sideways on small screens instead of pushing the page out of shape.
• If your device is set to reduce motion, animations are switched off.
• We do not use colour alone to carry meaning — a warning is labelled as one.

Loading and data use

Fonts and images are served from our own servers and kept small, and no third party is contacted unless you have agreed to it. A page here should load on a slow mobile connection without costing you much data.

Known problems

We are honest about what is not finished:

• Many pages are still being written. A page that is not ready says so rather than showing partial information.
• We have not yet completed testing with every combination of screen reader and browser.
• Advertising, once enabled, is supplied by a third party and we cannot guarantee the accessibility of an individual advert. We can and do control where ads appear.

How we test

Every page is checked automatically against the WCAG 2.2 A and AA rules using axe-core, at both phone and desktop widths, and we treat a failure as a bug that blocks other work. At the last run, across our main page types, there were no violations.

Automated testing catches perhaps half of what matters. It found three real problems on this site that we have since fixed: body text that was fractionally below the required contrast, links inside paragraphs that relied on colour alone, and a scrolling table that could not be reached with a keyboard.

Standard we aim for

We aim to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 at level AA. This statement reflects our own testing; it has not been independently audited.

If something does not work

Please tell us what you were trying to do and what happened. Accessibility problems are treated as faults, not feature requests, and we fix them ahead of new content.