The Met Office building surrounded by lawn and trees

Accessibility statement for the Met Office website

The Met Office runs this website. We want as many people as possible to be able to use our website.

This accessibility statement applies to the main domain of the Met Office website only (www.metoffice.gov.uk). It does not cover subdomains or the Met Office mobile app. For information on the accessibility of the Met Office mobile app please view the accessibility statement for the Met Office Android mobile application or the accessibility statement for the Met Office iOS mobile application.  

You should be able to:

  • zoom in up to 400% without problems
  • navigate most of the website using a keyboard
  • navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
  • use most of the website using a screen reader on supported browsers.

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. For example:

  • The dynamic weather maps do not have full text-alternatives in the immediate area. We recommend using the location search to find a place, where you can get all the weather information for that location.
  • Some of our videos do not have captions. 
  • Our UK weather warnings page has an accessible alternative.
  • Some non-text content on older pages do not have text alternatives.
  • Some older pages do not have accessible heading structures.
  • Some older pages do not have titles that clearly describe the content.
  • It cannot be guaranteed that content displayed in iFrames provided by third parties is fully accessible.
  • Some older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software.
  • Our website is designed to a minimum screen width of 320 CSS pixels. If you are accessing the website on a browser with less than 320 CSS pixels of the page visible, excluding the space required for a scroll bar, some horizonal scrolling may be required.

We will update the statement when issues are resolved.

Feedback and contact information

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

  • Email [email protected].
  • Call 0370 900 0100 (from the UK).
  • Call +44 330 135 0000 (outside the UK).

We aim to respond to all reasonable requests for accessible information.

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 [email protected] to let us know your concerns.

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 Met 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

This website does not conform to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. This website would partially conform to AA standard if advertising from uncontrolled sources were removed. Advertising from third parties can be identified with the label 'ADVERTISEMENT'. This website is partially compliant 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

Perceivable

  • Some images, graphs and videos do not have text alternatives, 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 provide accessible alternatives for all images, graphs and videos on frequently accessed and important pages by November 2021. We plan to provide accessible alternatives for all images, graphs and videos on all pages by the end of 2022.
  • The podcasts on the website are audio-only and we do not provide an alternative. This fails WCAG success criterion 1.2.1 (Audio-only and Video-only). We plan to review the way we use podcasts on the website and provide accessible alternatives by November 2021.
  • Some videos on the website are video-only with no audio track or alternative provided. This fails WCAG success criterion 1.2.1 (Audio-only and Video-only). We plan to provide accessible alternatives for videos on frequently accessed and important pages by November 2021. We plan to provide accessible alternatives for videos on all pages by the end of 2022.
  • Captions are not provided for all prerecorded videos. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.2 (Captions (Prerecorded)). We plan to provide accessible alternatives for videos on frequently accessed and important pages by November 2021. We plan to provide accessible alternatives for videos on all pages by the end of 2022.
  • On some website pages there is no heading structure, or the heading structure is incorrect. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships). We will resolve instances on frequently accessed and important pages by November 2021. We plan to have correct heading structures on all pages by the end of 2022.
  • Some of our PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards. For example, they may not be structured in a way that makes them accessible to a screen reader. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships). We plan to provide HTML versions of existing PDFs linked from frequently accessed and important pages by November 2021. We plan to review PDF use across all pages and, where possible, provide HTML alternatives by the end of 2022.
  • Some forms do not specify autocomplete attributes for each input field. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.5 (Identify Input Purpose). We will resolve this by August 2021.
  • There are some graphs across the website that contain text in an image format with no alternative. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.5 (Images of Text). We plan to resolve this on frequently accessed and important pages by November 2021. We plan to resolve this across all pages by the end of 2022.
  • Some legacy pages on our website, such as our map pages, require horizontal scrolling at a screen width of 320 CSS pixels. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.10 (Reflow). This will be addressed as part of the migration of these pages to a new responsive format before December 2021.

Operable

  • There are instances across the site where web pages do not have titles that adequately describe the topic or purpose of the page. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.2 (Page Titled). We plan to resolve this on frequently accessed and important pages by November 2021. We plan to resolve this on all pages by the end of 2022.
  • There are instances across the site where the purpose of a link cannot be determined from the link text or link context. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 (Link Purpose (In Context)). We plan to resolve this on frequently accessed and important pages by November 2021. We plan to resolve this on all pages by the end of 2022.
  • There are instances across the website where headings do not adequately describe how the information is organised in a page. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.6 (Headings and Labels). We plan to resolve this on frequently accessed and important pages by November 2021. We plan to resolve this on all pages by the end of 2022.

Robust

  • Some iFrames on the site do not have title attributes. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (Name, Role, Value). We are waiting on third party fixes for some of these instances to be resolved. We hope to have all instances resolved by December 2021.
  • On the candidate login page in the ‘Careers’ section of the website the error status message for invalid login details is not read by a screen reader. The content in this iFrame is provided by a third party. We hope to have the careers pages fully accessible by December 2021.

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

Online maps and mapping services

Our weather and climate maps do not have text equivalents. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content). We do not plan to make these maps accessible as online maps and mapping services are exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations, as long as essential information is provided in an accessible digital manner for maps intended for navigational use.

Audio description for prerecorded national weather videos

We do not provide audio description for our daily national weather videos since all the information in the video track is already provided in the audio track, so no audio description should be necessary. Our presenters are provided with guidance to make our videos as accessible as possible.

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards. For example, they may not be structured in a way that makes them accessible to a screen reader. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.3 (Info and Relationships). 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.

Third-party advertising content

We intentionally do not make the advertising on our website accessible via a keyboard. The advertisements on our site are third-party content that is neither controlled nor developed by the Met Office so we cannot guarantee content displayed is fully accessible. The accessibility regulations do not require us to make third-party content accessible. 

How we tested this website

We use the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines V2.1 level A and level AA to test how accessible the Met Office website is. We selected the sample of pages to test based on the popularity of the page, the importance of the information on the page and the visibility of the page.

This website is under active development and is being tested on an ongoing basis using the following:

  • Sitemorse
  • WAVE
  • WebDevTools
  • Screen readers
    • VoiceOver
    • NVDA
    • JAWS
    • Talkback
  • Manual inspection
  • Testing with support from users that rely on assistive technologies.

We tested our main website, available at www.metoffice.gov.uk.

What we are doing to improve accessibility

Parts of the website that will be improved for accessibility are listed, with approximate timings, in the section above-titled Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations. We will update this statement when issues are fixed.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 18 September 2019. It was last updated on 15 July 2021.

This website is tested on an ongoing basis. When new features are introduced to the website, they are tested against the international WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standard using assistive technologies such as WAVE, Axe and screen readers. We also perform manual inspection for new functionality and user test with users that rely on assistive technologies where appropriate.

We run ongoing analysis on the accessibility of the website using automated tools such as Sitemorse. We dedicate time on an ongoing basis to resolve issues that are reported. We are currently updating our processes to ensure content published through our content management system meets WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standard. We plan to have this in place by November 2021.

The first website accessibility audit was carried out in February 2019. The audit included a representative number of areas on our site which saw the highest traffic.

From October to November 2019 we reviewed a sample of our website which demonstrated a variation in content and functionality, considering the areas that received the greatest level of traffic. We checked this sample against the international WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standard.

The most recent audit was carried out from January to March 2021. The sample of the site audited was chosen to give an accurate representation of the Met Office website as a whole. It included all pages on our website that can be accessed through the navigation bar, the most popular pages in terms of user traffic and pages that include the variety of components we display across the site. The audit also looked at a representative sample of our pages that have content manually created and published through our content management system. Any non-accessible content discovered has been added to the accessibility statement with timelines for when the issue will be resolved.