Accessibility

Accessibility statement for Scotland’s environment website

Scotland’s Environment aims to provide a website that is usable and accessible to all. Our objective is to conform to guidelines and standards for UK Government websites, which support the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 at Level AA. These guidelines ensure that we achieve and maintain an appropriate accessibility standard and that our website is inclusive.

In addition, new accessibility regulations mean online public sector organisations have a legal duty to make sure that websites and mobile apps meet accessibility standards.

This accessibility statement covers Scotland’s environment website including the following domain and subdomain:

• Scotland’s environment website: https://www.environment.gov.scot/
• Scotland’s environment map: https://map.environment.gov.scot/

We know some parts of Scotland’s environment website are not fully accessible including:

• Our maps, data visualisation tools, 
• Audio, video & older PDF documents.

Feedback and contact information

If you have any problems accessing information on Scotland’s environment website then please contact us with the details of information you require and we will try to provide the information in a different format.

Contact Us

Our service level agreement is 28 days and we aim to reply as promptly as possible.

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

Scotland’s environment website is currently partially compliant and meets most of the WCAG 2.1 AA standards.

• Some area of the website have been identified as being non-compliant – see Accessibility Report summary at the end of this page.
• Some areas of the website are inaccessible and exempt because they are out-of-scope of the regulations. i.e Maps, Data visualisation tools etc. See full list below.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Accessibility issues identified by the audit include:

• Contrast Ratios on links, breadcrumb, search button & Image links
• Alerts on redundant links, skipped headings & redundant title text
• Missing Alt text issues.

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

Many of the map and data applications within Scotland’s environment website are not accessible and fall outside the scope of the accessibility regulations.

Exempt from accessibility regulations and therefore not accessible on this website are:

• Scotland’s environment map
• Land Information Search maps
• Data Visualisation Tools
• PDF documents published before September 2018
• Audio and video published before September 2020.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 8th September 2020. It was last reviewed on 14th March 2023.

Sample pages from Scotland’s environment website were selected for testing – these pages were considered to be representative of the website and it’s content and functionality. Pages selected for testing included:

• Home
• Air Quality
• Blog

What Scotland’s environment are doing to improve accessibility

Review and fix links with issues including alt text, empty links, broken links highlighted by the audit.