Accessibility statement for forestryandland.gov.scot

The following is a guide to accessing the Forestry and Land Scotland website and its content. For information about physical accessibility on the national forests and land managed by Forestry and Land Scotland, visit our Forest Accessibility guide.

This website is run by Forestry and Land Scotland. 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 this website is

While every effort has been taken to ensure the content of this website is as accessible as possible, some parts aren't perfectly configured. Please note:

  • older PDF documents aren't fully accessible to screen reader software. New PDFs are configured and adapted before being added to the website.
  • despite our best efforts, some images in the website do not have alternative text, so are not accessible to screen reader software.
  • the built-in screen reader with Edge browser does not recognise links styled as buttons on the site, however, in Immersive Reader mode, the screen reader will recognise the links. We recommend using this mode for if using Edge for screen reading.

What to do if you can't access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 10 business days.

If you can’t view the maps on our any of our web pages, contact us for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

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 accessibility requirements, please contact us by phone or email. Alternatively, enter a message in our dedicated web accessibility contact form. Our Digital Communications team will respond to your report and is responsible for addressing any issues.

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, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

If you are a deaf British Sign Language (BSL) user, you can contact us via Contact Scotland. If you require a BSL interpreter, please let us know before your visit and we can arrange this.

There is more information about physical accessibility on the national forests and land in our Forest Accessibility guide.

Technical information about this website's accessibility

Forestry and Land Scotland is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

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.

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

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value).

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

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 15 November 2021. The test was carried out by Forestry and Land Scotland, using a combination of the Siteimprove Accessibility Checker Google Chrome browser extension and the WAVE Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool. Testing was conducted by selecting a representative sample of pages within the forestryandland.gov.scot. This included the Home page and other "gateway" pages, standard content pages, events, forest search results, general site search results, blog/news, and pages for individual forest visitor destinations.

This statement was prepared on 23 July 2019. It was last updated on 26 August 2022.