Accessibility statement for the UK Government LAQM Support Website

This accessibility statement applies to the UK Government LAQM Support Website at https://laqm.defra.gov.uk

This website is run by Bureau Veritas UK in partnership with ExtraDigital on behalf of the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs. 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 problems
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 have a disability.

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
Some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard

Feedback and contact information

If you need any part of this service in a different format like large print, audio recording or braille, email laqmhelpdesk@bureauveritas.com
We’ll aim to get back to you within 2 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 laqmhelpdesk@bureauveritas.com

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

The Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

How we tested this website:

We last tested this website for accessibility issues in September 2022.
We used manual and automated tests to look for issues such as:

lack of keyboard accessibility
link text that’s not descriptive
non-unique or non-hierarchical headings
italics, bold and block capital formatting
inaccessible formatting in general
inaccessible language
inaccessible diagrams or images
lack of colour contrast for text, important graphics and controls
images not having meaningful alt text
problems when using assistive technologies such as screen readers and screen magnifiers

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.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

The EFT User Guide and Background Maps User Guide PDFs are not fully accessible. Accessible versions of these user guides will be provided in the next round of updates expected to be completed by 2024. If accessible versions of these user guides are required in the interim please contact the LAQM Helpdesk.

Disproportionate burden

After conducting an assessment, we have determined that it would be a disproportionate burden to ensure that all the Excel spreadsheets currently hosted on this website are compliant with the accessibility requirement. In part, this is because these spreadsheets have been formatted to enable data entry by users in a specific way and function as calculation tools. We have considered the audience of these spreadsheets and how they are used as well as the estimated costs and benefits.

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

Some of our older PDFs, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets don’t meet accessibility standards. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We plan to regularly review and check the accessibility of this website.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 28th July 2021, and updated on 20th September 2022.

This website was last tested in August 2023. The test was carried out by the accessibility and development team at ExtraDigital. We used the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool and a checklist we created with the help of the ExtraDigital accessibility team. We tested all the website’s pages.

Cookie	Duration	Description
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