Accessibility Statement

We want everyone to be able to use this website — including people who use a screen reader, navigate by keyboard, magnify the page, or have asked their device to reduce motion. This statement says what the site does to make that possible, what we have not yet got right, and how to tell us when something is in your way.

This site is built to conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 at level AA. We treat that as an engineering requirement rather than as a target for later: the checks below are part of how the site is built and reviewed, not a separate audit.

• Every control can be reached and operated with a keyboard, in a sensible order, and shows a visible focus indicator when it has focus.
• Interactive targets — links, buttons, the corner mark that opens the administration area — are sized to at least 24 by 24 pixels, so they can be hit on a touchscreen and with a pointer that is not steady.
• Text and its background meet the contrast ratios the guidelines require, on the light surfaces and the dark ones alike.
• Headings, lists, landmarks and form fields use the HTML elements built for them, so a screen reader can describe the page's structure and a reader can jump through it.
• Expanding controls, such as the answers on the FAQ page, announce whether they are open or closed, and each is linked to the panel it controls.
• Images that carry meaning have text alternatives. Decorative marks are hidden from assistive technology so they are not read out as noise.
• The page can be magnified to 200% and reflows rather than requiring horizontal scrolling.
• The site's own typeface is served from this site, and the page stays readable with the system typeface if it does not load.

Several pages animate as they load and as you scroll. If your operating system or browser is set to reduce motion, the site honours that setting: the animations are removed and the same content is shown at rest, in reading order. The Corporate Capability Deck, which presents as a sequence of screens, is served under that setting as a single plain document instead.

• The administration area, used only by our own staff, is held to the same standard, but has been tested less broadly than the public site and may lag behind it.
• Some case study images show interface screenshots. Their text alternatives describe what the image shows; they do not reproduce every word of text visible in it.
• Documents linked from this site in other formats, where they exist, may not meet the same standard as the pages themselves.

If you find something not listed here, we would like to know.

Accessibility is checked in three ways: automated checks run against the built site, manual keyboard and screen-reader passes on each page as it is changed, and measurement of focus order, target size and text spacing at the common viewport sizes. Where a change would take the site below the standard above, it is treated as a defect and fixed before it ships.

If any part of this site is difficult or impossible for you to use, write to the address shown with this document and tell us which page and what happened. We will reply within ten working days, and where we can we will send you the content in another form in the meantime. Reports of accessibility problems are handled as defects, not as feedback.

The site is built to work with current versions of the major browsers and the screen readers commonly used with them, on desktop and on mobile. It does not depend on any plug-in.

This statement is reviewed when the site changes in a way that affects it, and at least once a year. The effective date shown with it is the date of the wording you are reading.