Accessibility Statement for Defence Equipment and Support

This accessibility statement applies solely to the Defence Equipment and Support website (www.des.mod.uk).

We are committed to being an inclusive and diverse organisation, and as such we want as many people as possible to be able to use this website.For example, you should be able to:

• Zoom in by 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 by explaining acronyms and abbreviations, and avoiding jargon or unhelpful language that may cause confusion.

Sometimes you may encounter some technical or defence-specific words that don’t have an alternative, but we will try to do our best to explain these in plain English wherever possible.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible is this website?

While we have taken every effort to make this website as accessible as possible for all users, we know that some parts of this website are not fully accessible at this time. While we will work to make these fully accessible in the future, we are conscious of the following:

• You cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
• You cannot change the colours, contrast levels or fonts
• Some older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
• You cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader
• There’s a limit to how far you can magnify maps
• Video – Screen readers may announce an empty container

Please note also that some resources such as pre-recorded media, maps and documents published before September 2018 may not be fully accessible at this time.

Feedback and contact information

We welcome feedback from our users and welcome your thoughts on how we could make our website more accessible.

If you need information on this website in a different format, would like to highlight an accessibility difficulty that you’ve encountered, or think that we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact us at dessec-webadmin@mod.gov.uk, and include:

• Your name:
• Your email address:
• The web address (URL) of the content:
• The format you need, for example, audio, CD, braille, BSL or large print, accessible PDF:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 10 days of your email.

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).

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

• You cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
• You cannot change the colours, contrast levels or fonts
• Some older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
• You cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader
• There’s a limit to how far you can magnify maps

We will look to address these issues as soon as possible, and will update our accessibility statement to reflect the improvements as we make them.

Furthermore, we are aware that some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).

We plan to add text alternatives for all images by September 2020. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on [date when it was first published]. It was last reviewed on [date when it was last reviewed].

This website was last tested on [date]. The test was carried out by [add name of organisation that carried out test, or indicate that you did your own testing].