This accessibility statement applies to the Essex County Fire and Rescue Service website located at join.essex-fire.gov.uk

This website is run by Essex County Fire and Rescue Service. 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 font size
  • viewport allows display scaling of at least 200%
  • 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. Our website has a dedicated accessibility page which gives a brief overview of changes that can/have been made to make the website accessible.

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:

  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader

Feedback and contact information

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

We’ll consider your request and get back to you with an initial reply within seven days.

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, contact us:

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 visiting us in person

Our offices have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.

If you have any other questions about what facilities are available when you visit us please contact us how to contact us:

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Essex County Fire and Rescue Service 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 fully compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.

Non-accessible content

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. By December 2021, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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. For example, we do not plan to fix historical job descriptions.

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We have been working with the Capsule Marketing to fix identified issues and released the latest version of these to the website on 9 November 2020.

We will continue to monitor accessibility using automated and manual checks.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 9 November 2020 It was last reviewed on 27 November 2020.

This website was last tested on 9 November 2020. The test was carried out by Capsule Marketing.

The following websites were tested including several subpages from each:

A range of accessibility testing tools have been used including aCe and aXe.

aCe is a specifically designed testing tool to give an accurate audit of compliance status. This tool scans your site to ensure that compliance is met and gives feedback on where to improve.

All pages that were tested received the following notice to indicate compliance.

A green tick with text next to it that reads: compliant" Great work, you are compliant with the WCAG 2.1 level AA.

aXe is another testing tool used by installing a browser extension which we use as a further check for compliance and to backup what is being reported by aCe.