Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to the VisitScotland website.

This website is run by VisitScotland. 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 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 (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 is this website

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

• A correctly formed heading structure is not present to facilitate navigation.
• Select videos present on the site lack an audio alternative.
• Where present, multiple languages are not defined.
• Multiple parsing errors are present.
• Some websites within the VisitScotland.com network have a poor keyboard navigation

Some older applications, such as our product listings and product search pages, contain legacy accessibility issues:

• Missing form input labels
• Related form fields not properly grouped
• Some custom controls lack defined roles that would allow them to be controlled by assistive technologies
• “Skip to content” links not properly configured
• Some child elements are focusable but are not voiced by screenreaders
• Zoom in and out does not work on some pages

We are still making changes and tweaks to improve our website. These issues will be addressed as we reskin our older applications to bring them in line with the new website design.
 

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format, please contact us via:

• email info@visitscotland.com or customer.feedback@visitscotland.com

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 5 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, contact us at:

• info@visitscotland.com
• Or visit our feedback and complaints page for further info. 

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

VisitScotland 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, the non-compliances are listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Text or audio alternative descriptions are not present for pre-recorded videos. Users with hearing or visual impairments will be unable to access the information within the videos. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.1 (Audio-Only and Video-Only (pre-recorded).  

A correctly formed heading structure is not present to facilitate navigation across the site, with empty heading levels present in the cookie banner and a skipped H1 heading within the top navigation. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.1 (Bypass blocks).  

Multiple languages are present on certain pages that have not been programmatically determined. Both assistive technologies and conventional user agents can render text more accurately if the language of each passage of text is identified. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 3.1.2 (Language of parts).

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are committed to continually improving the accessibility of our website. We achieve this by:

• Performing regular accessibility audits.
• Incorporating feedback from users to improve our services.
• Keeping up with the latest best practices and web standards.

We have a dedicated channel for audio described videos.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 15/02/2023. It was last reviewed on 04/04/2024.

This website was last tested on 23/02/2023. The test was carried out by Zoonou. Zoonou used WCAG-EM to define the pages tested and test approach.