Accessibility statement

The National Careers Service website is run by the Department for Education (DfE). We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website, including people who use assistive technologies. This means for example, that you will be able to:

  • navigate the website using just a keyboard
  • navigate the website using speech recognition software, like Dragon Naturally Speaking
  • listen to the website using a screen reader, including the most recent versions of JAWS
  • magnify text on screen with ZoomText

We’ve also made the website content as simple and as clear 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. Things include:

  • the spatial and abstract assessments within the skills health check, which contain images. Alternative text cannot be supplied for these assessments without influencing your results and invalidating your assessment
  • the personal skills assessments and most of the activity skills assessments on the skills health check. These are quite long and could be difficult to work through. You can save your progress during the assessments so that you can finish each assessment at your own pace
  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text on the site

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

If you need help using this website, you can contact us and an adviser will get back to you to provide support.

The following information will help us to deal promptly with your enquiry:

  • the web address (url) of the page you want help with
  • the type of help you need
  • your name and email address

We’re open from 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday, and 10am to 5pm Saturday.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any issues that are not listed on this page, or you think we’re not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, you can:

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 National Careers Service 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.

General observations

The content listed below is accessible, but may still cause an issue.

JAWS and Fusion

One general observation identified during testing can be found within the skills assessment (working with numbers) section of the site.

Some of the table information can be hard to interpret because of the way it has been set out. It’s possible that a user could find it hard to remember all the information required to complete the 'working with numbers' activity. The same is true for some of the clerical checking activities.

These activities may also cause problems for someone who has a learning disability that limits their access to content that is presented in this way.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Images within the spatial and abstract assessments on the skills health check tool do not always have suitable image descriptions. Users of assistive technologies may not have access to information conveyed in images. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (Non-text Content).

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

The skills health check assessment results reports are in PDF format but are accessible to screen readers. We also provide results in Microsoft Word as an alternative, which is fully accessible.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 12 January 2022. The test was carried out on our behalf by Technology Services: End User Computing, Technology Group, which is part of the Department for Education (DfE).

We tested:

The testing was carried out on:

  • the skills health check tool
  • the save my progress page

During testing, the user was able to:

  • start a skills health check assessment
  • save progress
  • return to and continue an assessment
  • complete an assessment and download report

Testing was carried out using the following software:

  • Dragon NaturallySpeaking Professional (V15.4)
  • JAWS (2020)
  • Fusion (2020)
  • ZoomText (2020)

At the time of testing, these were the National Careers Service's supported versions of accessibility software.

Things to note:

  • WCAG 2.1 AA standards were considered and reported against
  • the browser used was IE11 as this is standard in the Department for Education (DfE)
  • testing was done with 2 different screen reader packages, as they often interact differently with a page
  • testing was carried out using only keyboard, keyboard commands and voice where applicable - a mouse or similar device was not used
  • during testing, consideration was given to usability and to neurodiversity
  • compatibility and usability cannot be guaranteed for people who access the system outside of the DfE network, as it is not possible to test for every browser, operating system and accessibility software package

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 16 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 18 April 2023.

This website was last tested on 12 January 2022. The test was carried out by the Technology Services: End User Computing at the Department for Education.

The pages we’ve chosen have been recently updated to improve accessibility and the skills health check is amongst the top ten pages visited.