We are committed to making this website accessible and easy to use for everyone.

This statement applies to content published on the https://victimcaremerseyside.org domain. This website is run by Merseyside's Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC).

It is designed to be used by as many people as possible. The text should be clear and simple to understand. You should be able to:

  • zoom in up to 300% without problems
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
  • use most of the website using a screen reader ( Apple VoiceOver)

How accessible this website is

Parts of this website are not fully accessible. For example:

We will update the statement when issues are fixed or when we expect them to be fixed.

Feedback and contact information

Tell us if you need information in a different format.

In your message, include:

  • the web address (URL) of the content
  • your email address and name
  • the format you need - for example, plain text, braille, BSL, large print or audio CD

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

Maintaining an accessible website is an ongoing process and we are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website to offer a user-friendly experience.

If you find any problems or if you need information on this website in a different form like an accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please contact us using our online contact form.

If you cannot view the map on our 'contact us' page, please call us on (0151) 777 5155 or email us for directions.

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

Merseyside PCC is committed to making its 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 listed below.

Non-accessible content

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Success Criterion 1.2.2: Captions
Some pages contain embedded YouTube videos. Some of these don't contain captions. Captions on videos are important for users who are deaf or hard of hearing. Since this is a third party service, we are unable to add captions for videos that are not our own.

Success Criterion 2.4.4: Link Purpose (In Context)
Our homepage features a Twitter feed. This has links that do not contain text, or contain images with no alternative text. Meaningful links help users choose which links to follow without requiring complicated strategies to understand the page. Because this is a third party plugin, we are unable to fix these issues.

Success Criterion 4.1.1: Parsing
Our homepage features a Twitter feed. This contains multiple elements that have non unique ID’s. Duplicate values of type ID can be problematic for user agents that rely on this attribute to accurately convey relationships between different parts of content to users. Because this is a third party plugin, we are unable to fix these issues.

Success Criterion 4.1.2: Name, Role, Value
Our homepage features a Twitter feed. This contains elements that have “aria-labelledby” attributes that reference ID’s that do not exist on the page. It also contains elements that use “aria-labelledby” attributes without a valid role. Because this is a third party plugin, we are unable to fix these issues.

Some pages contain embedded YouTube videos. Some of these contain elements that use “aria-labelledby” attributes without a valid role. Because this is a third party plugin, we are unable to fix this issue.

Some of our organization pages use MapBox maps to show locations. These contain elements that use “aria-labelledby” attributes without a valid role. Because this is a third party plugin, we are unable to fix this issue.

Success Criterion 1.4.1 due to creating links that are not visually evident without color vision
We use CloudFlare to help with the security of our website. There may be rare occasions where a user is shown a page produced by Cloudflare rather than our website. This page contains links which may be hard to see for colour-blind users. Because this page is provided by a third party service, we are unable to fix this issue.

Best Practice
We use Recaptcha by Google on our contact forms to help cut down on spam. We are aware of a minor issue relating to best practices. Recaptcha has a “role presentation” attribute which is not removed when the element is made visible. Because this is a third party plugin, we are unable to fix this issue.

We use CloudFlare to help with the security of our website. There may be rare occasions where a user is shown a page produced by Cloudflare rather than our website. This page has some known best practice accessibility issues. These include a missing “main” element and elements that are not contained by landmarks. Because this page is provided by a third party service, we are unable to fix this issue.

PDFs and non-HTML documents

Some documents on this website are not accessible in a number of ways including missing titles and missing bookmarks.

We will use Adobe Accessibility Checker to ensure that any new PDFs are accessible.

Training has been provided to staff to ensure PDFs are accessible going forward.

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

Non-HTML documents published before September 2018 do not need to be accessible - unless users need them to use a service.

How we tested this website

We referred to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (V2.1 level A and level AA) to test how accessible merseysidepcc.info is. We carried out a series of manual checks on a sample of pages to verify compliance, manual checks included; keyboard access, contrast, text resizing and more.

We used a number of automated tools to test the HTML content of the website and fixed the output of the reports this included;

We used a PDF accessibility checker

We used a screen reader

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are working to fix content which fails to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

Where possible, PDFs which have been added to the website during 2022 have been fixed and we are continuing to work to fix outstanding PDFs.

We will update this page when issues are fixed.

We will retest the site annually to ensure compliance.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 25th November 2022. It was last reviewed on 25th November 2022.