Are you OK with cookies?

We use small files called ‘cookies’ on magistrates.judiciary.uk. Some are essential to make the site work, some help us to understand how we can improve your experience, and some are set by third parties. You can choose to turn off the non-essential cookies. Which cookies are you happy for us to use?

Skip to content

Accessibility statement

This statement applies to content published on https://magistrates.judiciary.uk.

Any links to volunteer as a magistrate go to a separate application service on a different domain managed by a third-party provider. You should check the accessibility statement of the website for its compliance status and any accessibility issues.

This website is run by the Judicial Office.  The Ministry of Justice is responsible for the technical aspects.

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 using the browser or device settings;
  • navigate most of the website using a keyboard or speech recognition software;
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver); and
  • zoom in up to 400% without text spilling off the screen.

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:

  • Some of our link text is not descriptive and is styled as a button, Dragon users might find that following these links is somewhat counter-intuitive. 
  • There are some padding issues with video content on our web pages.
  • Our main navigation menu can obscure some of the content on web pages when sub menus are locked open.

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, you can contact us:

Judicial Office
11th floor, Thomas More Building
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London
WC2A 2LL

Email: website.enquiries@judiciary.uk

Reporting accessibility problems

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page or think we’re not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, contact website.enquiries@judiciary.uk giving details of the issue and any assistive technology you are using.

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 Judicial Office 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

The website has been tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard. 

This website is partially compliant with the WCAG 2.2 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

  • When sub menus are pinned open, they can obscure content immediately below, including the main language switcher and, on some display widths, other menu items.  This fails WCAG 2.2 Success Criterion 2.1.1 Keyboard and Success Criterion 2.4.11, Focus Not Obscured.  Closing the sub menu which has been opened will reveal this content again.
  • Some link text has been visually styled as a button. For example, the volunteer now button is a link styled as a button but not defined as a button. This fails success criterion 4.1.2 Name, role, value. Dragon users might struggle to activate these links as they are expecting them to respond to “button”.  Users using a keyboard may struggle to activate some links that appear visually as a button with the spacebar. The links take the user to specific URLs and there is no change on the page, so they do facilitate the expected action of a link.
  • Some of our breadcrumb links do not format correctly on mobile view. When the screen reduces to mobile view (a minimum of 320 pixels width), the breadcrumb link changes to a single back link to home rather than having an hierarchical list of links. This issue does not directly fail a WCAG success criterion.  We have looked into this issue and we struggle to fix this because some of our page titles can be very long and are therefore too long to display on a narrow page. The user is not blocked from accessing any part of the site.  
  • Video content has a large amount of fixed padding which disrupts the style of the page when reading on desktop. In particular, video transcripts are forced below the block of text after video content, and this causes it to appear dissociated from the video content. This could be confusing for screen reader users and therefore fails WCAG success criterion 1.3.2 Meaningful sequence. We are aware of this issue but we have limited control over this structure, they are YouTube and/or Vimeo content and we are beholden to their styles.  We are continuing to look for ways to improve this experience.
  • YouTube videos do not have a transcription provided.  The videos have captions, but these need to be turned on by the user.

Disproportionate burden

We are not claiming disproportionate burden for this website.

Content that is not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

The Justice Digital team reviews accessibility for all the websites built using its website builder system and aims to fix any issues found.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 15 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 19 August 2024. 

This website was reviewed on 19 August 2024 against WCAG 2.2 AA standard. 

The test was carried out internally by the Ministry of Justice Accessibility Team. We reviewed a sample of pages manually, as well as using automated testing tools including VoiceOver, WAVE automated testing tool and Web Aim Colour Contrast checker.