Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to content published on the www.west-midlands.police.uk domain. It does not apply to content published to content on service.west-midlands.police.uk subdomains. For example, jobs.west-midlands.police.uk.

This website is run by West Midlands Police. We want as many people as possible to use it. You should be able to:

• zoom in up to 200% with no problems
• navigate most of the website using only a keyboard
• navigate most of the website using speech recognition software

How accessible this website is

We are aware that some of this website is not fully accessible. For example:

• it’s difficult to select a date in any section of an incident report using the keyboard or a screen reader
• most PDFs are not accessible
• heading elements are not totally consistent
• error messages are not identified in some forms
• some images do not have good alternative text
• some pages do not have good paragraph spacing
• the language on some pages is not written to a good readability standard

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We plan to identify and fix issues according to the timescales shown in this statement. In addition, we will publish a roadmap when one has been agreed.

How to request content in an accessible format

If you need information in a different format, email us. In your email, tell us:

• the web address (URL) you’re viewing
• what content you need
• the format you need, for example an accessible PDF

If you have any problems using our incident reporting section, call us on 101 and explain your situation. Our phone advisors will be happy to take your report.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We always want to improve the accessibility of this website.

If you:

• find any problems not listed on this page or
• feel we’re not meeting the accessibility requirements

Email us.

Enforcement Procedure

If you’re not happy with how we respond to your email, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

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’).

Contacting us by phone

We provide a text relay service for people who are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment.

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

West Midlands Police is committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 AA standard.

Non-accessible content

The content that is not accessible is outlined in this section. It also has details of:

• where it fails the success criteria
• when we will try to fix the issue by

Our wording on our Your Options pages asks users to visit live chat by “using the button on the right of the screen.” This fails WCAG 2.1. 1.3.3 success criterion (sensory characteristics). We aim to fix this by December 2020.

Online incident reporting

Our online incident reporting fails the following success criterion:

• WCAG 1.4.1 (Use of Color
• WCAG 2.1.1 (Keyboard)
• WCAG 2.4.3 (Focus Order)
• WCAG 3.3.1 (Error Identification)
• WCAG 3.3.2 (Labels or Instructions)
• WCAG 3.3.3. (Error Suggestions)

We aim to fix this by December 2020.

Disproportionate burdens

On our website, it is impossible to check when PDFs and other documents were published. This means we will not be able to check if the document must comply with the WCAG 2.1.A requirements.

We will review all documents on the site to ensure they are accessible but at this stage do not have an estimated fix date.

In addition, all future PDFs and other documents will be compliant with the WCAG 2.1. requirements.

We are currently building a new version of the track your case and witness statement sections of the website. Due to this, we have not tested the current sections.

We aim to get these new sections on the site by November/December 2020. When this has happened, we will test them and provide an update to this statement.

Content not in scope of the accessibility regulations

Some of our pre-recorded video and audio on our website does not have the following:

• WCAG 2.1. 1.1.2 (Captions (Prerecorded))
• WCAG 2.1. 1.2.3 (Audio Description or Media Alternative)
• WCAG 2.1. 1.2.5 (Audio Description (Prerecorded))

We are creating guidance to ensure this is met from 23 September 2020.

Our live chat service is provided to us by LivePerson, a third party company. Due to this, we do not have to test live chat to ensure it is complaint with the requirements.

LivePerson have provided the following statement to us:

The Web Experiences team is partnering with Deque, a website accessibility firm, to remediate, validate, and ultimately certify the LivePerson consumer experience as WCAG 2.1 AA compliant. To reach WCAG 2.1 AA compliance, we will be deploying fixes to the consumer experience over the next few months that will incrementally get us to certification.

Please note that issues that are remediated and validated under WCAG 2.1 AA compliance only apply for the default engagements, window themes, and out-of-the-box features/taglets within the consumer window. Any brands that utilize custom windows, taglets, and engagements, should be reviewed and updated by the customer, or their representative, to meet WCAG 2.1 AA compliance.

We are aware that the microsite 27 Station Road (https://www.west-midlands.police.uk/27stationroad) is also not accessible. However, there is no availability of automated and cost-efficient solutions for the site, so this will not change.

How we tested this website

This website was and is currently being tested for compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines V2.1 level A and level AA, and these tests have been carried out internally.

This statement

This statement was prepared on 14 September 2020. It was last updated on 8 December 2020.