Accessibility statement

Accessibility statement for First Steps ED

This website is run by First Steps ED. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

zoom in 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

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

AbilityNet has some useful 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:

third party video players
some of our online forms are hosted on external sites
JustGiving widget

You can email info@firststepsed.co.uk if you need a document or other form in an alternative format.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, email info@firststepsed.co.uk. We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 5-10 days.

We try to write in plain English and try to avoid jargon where possible. If you don’t understand any information or direction on our site, please visit our Contact Page for the best way to contact the team.

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, contact info@firststepsed.co.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

First Steps ED 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 fully compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

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 July 2022. When we publish new content use of images meet accessibility standards.

Third party platforms

We frequently publish or link to content which is hosted on third party platforms. This includes:

PDFs, documents and guides hosted on other websites
videos hosted on YouTube (or similar video hosting platforms)
content designed for social media, such as Facebook or Twitter

We’re responsible for ensuring the content we create meets accessibility requirements. However, we’re not responsible for the accessibility of the platform itself, or content which has been created by a third party.

Disproportionate burden

We have a small number of resources and documents on www.firststepsed.co.uk which are not well used (this can be the case where we’re obliged to publish a document with little user need for it). Whilst we ensure all popular and most-used documents are reviewed for issues, due to our limited resources some lesser-accessed files may not be reviewed as frequently.

We don’t believe the time, effort and resource to review all the documents is justified. As such, we’ve assessed that it would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. We believe that:

the effort made would be of little to no benefit to users due to the low usage
with finite resource, reviewing or fixing the pages or resources would take away from core web activity, and essential services needed to manage firststepsed.co.uk
maintaining our essential services and resources should be prioritised over time taken to work to fix documents which aren’t well used
users will benefit most from us focusing our available resources on fixing and maintaining our more popular areas and documents on firststepsed.co.uk and ensuring that any new documents are accessible.

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

Some of the PDFs or word documents which were originally designed for print within our resources area of the website are not accessible. This they were not intended for digital use. We have made the decision to host these documents on the website so that our users can download and print them if they wish, but they are exemptions to the web content accessibility guidelines.

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. Whilst we don’t plan to fix documents which are older than this date, we will ensure any new PDFs or Word documents meet accessibility standards wherever possible.