Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to Wales Coast Path

How you can use this website

This website is run by Natural Resources Wales (NRW). We want everyone to be able to access our websites. For example, that means you should be able to:

• navigate most of the site in a logical order using just a keyboard
• navigate to page content quickly using a keyboard, a screen reader or both through the 'skip to main content' link
• provided at the top of each page
• listen to most of the site using a screen reader (our testers have had high success with NVDA)
• use the visible focus provided across the site to support navigation to most pages and elements of the site (excluding maps)
• use your browser zoom to magnify your view up to 200% without the text spilling off the screen
• remove styling and navigate the site in a logical order

We are working to make the website text easy to understand. We will also ensure that our walking itineraries are available as an accessible webpage alongside a downloadable format.

Make your device easier to use

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, for example:

• most documents are not accessible to screen reader software, this includes our reports, brand guidelines and media pack in a Portable Document Format (PDF).
• none of our maps are accessible and do not contain a text alternative in most cases
• some links on our website aren’t self-explanatory for a screen reader user
• some further development issues remain and these have been refined and added to the backlog we are currently working through.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information from our website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:
• call us on 0300 065 3000 (Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm)
• email enquiries@naturalresourceswales.gov.uk
• write to us at:
Natural Resources Wales
Customer Care Centre
Ty Cambria
29 Newport Rd
Cardiff
CF24 0TP
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 working days.

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, please email the NRW Digital Team digidol@naturalresourceswales.gov.uk

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)

Technical information about this website's accessibility

Natural Resources Wales is committed to making this 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.

• interactive coast path map can only be used with either a mouse or with finger taps and swipes
• leaflets are designed for print
• distance tables are designed to help you cross reference locations to find out the distances between them to help with planning your visit

The content below are for our partners and interested stakeholders for opportunities to work together or for research purposes and therefore not intended for general public use:

• media pack
• reports
• brand guidelines
• interpreting the Wales Coast Path guidelines
• marketing toolkit

However, we will review this content to see whether they can be made accessible.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

We are continuing to work to fix these accessibility problems by ensuring that our website text is clear and easy to understand with logical structure.

Guidance documents

Most of our reports were created before September 2018 and is published in PDF format. Many of these documents are not formatted so they’re not accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2. New reports are published as web pages where possible, and any documents we publish should meet accessibility standards.

Application forms

We do not have any application forms on our website.

Links

We are aware of the following issues with the links on our site:

• some link text doesn't make sense when read on its own, for example 'click here'
• many older PDF files contain broken links

We carry out regular checks of any newly broken links on our webpages and fix as soon as they are identified.

We will not fix broken links in documents published before September 2018, if it's not essential for a user to access a service.

When we publish new content, we'll make sure our links meet accessibility standards.

Maps embedded on our website

The interactive coast path map is not accessible. There is currently no accessible alternative and we will look into ways to provide a text alternative.

Papers and minutes from public meetings after September 2018

We do not hold public meetings therefore no papers and minutes are published.

Research and reports documents

Any reports and research documents published before September 2018 are not accessible documents may include:

• formatting that may cause issues, for example use of tables without label descriptions
• images without text alternative (alt text), so the information in them isn’t available to people using a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1.
• some images within PDFs contain text (for example, diagrams with charts or graphs), so people with dyslexia or using a screen reader will not be able to read the information. This doesn't meet WCAG success criterion 1.4.5 (Images of Text).

We will attempt to make research and report documents from September 2019 as accessible as possible.

Feedback

You can use our Give Us Your Feedback form to tell us your experience. You can find the link to it at the bottom of each webpage.

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

We don't plan to fix the following, as they are exempt in the regulations.

Older documents

Our older PDF don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 and success criterion 4.1.2. The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

Although we are not required to make old documents accessible, we will however review the following content:

• reports
• interpreting the coast path guidelines
• media pack
• distance tables

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are actively looking to improve the accessibility on our website. The following are some of the areas we are focussing on over the next 12 months to make our website more accessible.

• Continue to make documents in active use into accessible format
• Continue to review areas of the website and rewrite to be in a clear language
• Further refine and fix remaining web development issues with our templates

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 22 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 22 September 2020. 

This website was last tested in June 2020. Tests have been carried out by Zoonou and continue to be made by internal testers as we progress with fixing problems identified.

The testers used a representative sample of the websites as defined by the Website Accessibility Conformance Evaluation Methodology (WCAG-EM).

Our test partner tested this site by manually reviewing representative URLs of all the templates as well as providing the results of a scan of the whole site to report issues that could be detected by automation.

We also use SiteMorse to run automated scans of broken links and missing alternative text for images issues on a regular basis.