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.
  • Our UK weather warnings page has an accessible alternative.
  • It cannot be guaranteed that content displayed in iFrames provided by third parties is fully accessible.
  • Some older and infrequently accessed pages may not be 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 on older and infrequently accessed pages. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content). We plan to audit and update all pages by December 2023.
  • 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 December 2023.
  • Some videos on older and infrequently accessed pages 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 audit and update all pages by December 2023.
  • Captions are not provided for prerecorded videos on older and infrequently accessed pages. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.2 (Captions (Prerecorded)). We plan to audit and update all pages by December 2023.
  • There is no heading structure, or the heading structure is incorrect, on some older and infrequently accessed pages. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships). We plan to audit and update all pages by December 2023.
  • Some graphs on older and infrequently accessed pages 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 audit and update all pages by December 2023.
  • 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 October 2022.

Operable

  • Some titles do not adequately describe the topic or purpose of the page on older and infrequently accessed pages. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.2 (Page Titled). We plan to audit and update all pages by December 2023.
  • The purpose of a link cannot be determined from the link or link context on some older and infrequently accessed pages. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.4 (Link Purpose (In Context)). We plan to audit and update all pages by December 2023.
  • Headings do not adequately describe how the information is organised on some older and infrequently accessed pages. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.6 (Headings and Labels). We plan to audit and update all pages by December 2023.

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 July 2023.
  • 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 2023.

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.

The size and scale of our website makes it difficult to ensure our older and infrequently accessed pages are accessible. We are currently reviewing our accessibility governance, processes and systems, so that all of our content is accessible. As this work progresses, we will update our accessibility statement with clear timelines to resolve non-accessible content.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 18 September 2019. It was last updated on 05 September 2022.

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 December 2023.

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.

A further 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.

Over the course of 2021, we reviewed a representative sample of pages that are manually created and published through our content management system. We identified non-accessible content and resolved these issues on frequently used and important pages by December 2021. Issues that may still affect the accessibility of older and infrequently used pages are identified in this accessibility statement. We plan to introduce processes to audit and update all pages on an ongoing basis by December 2023.