What is an accessible website?

An accessible website allows users to navigate freely and view content without creating barriers. This means that information has to be easy to reach and available to as many visitors as possible. To ensure that these challenges are met, the website must assume that there's no standard user or browsing device.

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 unhappy with how we respond to your complaint contact the Equality and Advisory Service.

Our accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to the Scottish Forestry website - www.forestry.gov.scot.

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've a disability.

Technical information about this website's accessibility

We're committed to making this website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This website was last tested during September 2019. The test was carried out by us using the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool.

Testing was conducted by selecting a representative sample of pages within www.forestry.gov.scot. This included:

  • the homepage
  • other 'gateway' pages
  • standard content pages,
  • general site search results
  • news

Compliance status 

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standards.

How accessible this website is

While every effort has been taken to ensure the content of this website is as accessible as possible, we know some parts of this website aren't fully accessible. For example:

  • for optimum performance, this website is best visited on a Microsoft Edge, Firefox or Chrome browser
  • documents aren't fully accessible to screen reader software
  • live video streams do not have captions
  • some of our videos and animations do not have subtitles
  • some of our images do not have alt text so aren't accessible to screen reader software

Please note, we plan to subtitle our videos and add alt text to all of our images by April 2022.

Content that is not within scope of accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

Accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018. However, for those documents which are classed as 'active administration documents' and are essential to providing our services, we'll look to review these in 2022.

We plan to fix our documents by replacing the document with an accessible HTML page or ensuring that, if the document is to remain as is, that it meets digital accessibility standards.

In the meantime, email the Communications team if you experience any difficulties with a document on our website.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations. 

Feedback and contact information

Contact us if you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille.

Translations

Contact us if you need information on this website translated.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We're always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. Email the Communications team if you find any problems not listed on this page or if you think we're not meeting accessibility requirements.

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Contact us via Contact Scotland if you're a deaf British Sign Language (BLS) user. If you need a BSL interpreter, let us know and we can arrange this.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was last reviewed on 23 September 2021.