Accessibility

This accessibility statement applies to the Lancashire Constabulary website.

Ensuring everyone has access to the services we provide is important. To make us more accessible we continue to review how people access our online services and improve them where possible.

Accessibility on our website

We recognise that some internet users can find websites difficult to use due to the way they have been designed and so we have tried to ensure that our website is accessible in accordance with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines. As an example, our website uses dynamically sized text allowing all browsers to resize the text to the users needs.

If you require further assistance in tailoring your browser to make it more accessible, there are a number of useful guides available online, which can be found by searching for 'browser accessibility customisation'.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

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

Browsers now have auto language translate options. Users can do this for Edge and Google via the following links:

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like an accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording, braille or you can’t view a map for directions please email our Diversity and Inclusion Unit on: [email protected] which is monitored on a regular basis.

Or alternatively our postal address is:

Diversity and Inclusion Unit

Corporate Development

Lancashire Constabulary Headquarters

Saunders Lane,

Hutton,

Preston,

PR4 5TJ

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 our Diversity and Inclusion Unit on: [email protected].

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).

Contacting us by phone or online

Our website does have an inbuilt language translation facility. If you are unable to fully understand our website we have the facilities of ‘Language Line’ which provides a telephone interpreting service in over 170 languages. This telephone translation service can also be provided by telephone by ringing 101 or at any police station with a public enquiry desk, details of which can be found elsewhere on this site. If you're deaf or hard of hearing, see our Accessible Contact page.

We have a number of other options available for those who are deaf, hard of hearing or speech impaired. As an example you can register for the 999 Emergency SMS Service that allows you to text the police in an emergency from your mobile phone. This service works throughout the UK on all mobile networks, but it cannot be used from abroad. You have to be registered to use this SMS service. Simply text 'register' from your mobile phone to 999 and follow the instructions.

You can also contact us online using our online reporting site, where you can report a crime or incident, contact an officer directly or send us a general enquiry.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Lancashire Constabulary 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 currently partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to some images not having 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 are currently working on adding text alternatives for all images. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

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

Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
Some of our side panels aren’t linked sufficiently
You cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader

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

PDFs and other documents:

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. We are currently working on fixing these.

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.

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

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared in September 2020. It was last reviewed in 12th July 2024.

This website was last tested on 7th November 2023. The test was carried out by our designated Web Officer via Siteimprove.