Accessibility statement for E-CLAIMS

This accessibility statement applies to E-CLAIMS, which is the website used to manage and administer funding to schemes in England from the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund.

This website is run by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. On this website you should be able to:

zoom in up to 200% without the structure of the page being disrupted
navigate most of the website using a keyboard
skip to the main content of all pages using a keyboard
skip back to the top of all pages using a keyboard
read and access all menu and sub-menus using a keyboard or screen reader
use a keyboard or screen reader to read and access all tables

How accessible is this website?

This website is not fully accessible. For example:

not all pages have headings which describe their purpose clearly
not all pages can be used with screen readers or speech recognition software
not all pages can be searched for and located easily
not all links describe their purpose
labels and instructions are not always provided when user input is required
navigational mechanisms used more than once are not always consistent
some sections of pages do not have high colour contrast

Browser and device compatibility

You will get the best experience of this website by using Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Using E-CLAIMS on other browsers may present different results on any assistive technologies.

This website is not compatible for use with mobile devices.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

If you are an applicant or recipient of the European Regional Development Fund and need any help to use this website or to access any information held within it, contact us by phone 03332025084 option 3 or email esif@communities.gov.uk.

If you are an applicant or recipient of the European Social Fund and need any help to use this website or to access any information held within it, contact us by phone 03332025084 option 2 or by email e.claimssupport@dwp.gov.uk.

The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and the Department for Work and Pensions is committed to spending a proportion of its resources on accessibility to support any user that is having difficulty using E-CLAIMS. These above email addresses are monitored between 9am and 5pm on Monday to Friday.

If you find any problems that are not listed on this page or have specific accessibility needs that we are not meeting, contact us through the above email addresses.

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 are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) .

Technical information about the accessibility of this website

Compliance status
This website is not compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard due to the exemptions listed below.
Non-accessible content
The content in this website is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
Not applicable.
Disproportionate burden
The European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund are only due to invest in new projects in England until the end of 2021, and to continue to invest in funded projects until the end of 2024.

Due to the time-limited nature of these European funding programmes, the decreasing number of users of the website expected over the next few years and the excessive costs that have been calculated for E-CLAIMS to become WCAG 2.1 AA compliant, therefore this would be a disproportionate burden within the definition of the accessibility regulations.

What we are doing to improve accessibility

We have undertaken an audit on the overall performance from an accessibility point of view. The dashboards have been improved and have good accessibility scores. There were however cases where several errors were found by the accessibility tool; most of them were repetitive and fixing one of the issues will potentially fix a high number of other errors highlighted. These identified issues will be fixed to improve accessibility.

Despite our understanding that fixing this website's accessibility issues is a disproportionate burden, we recognise the importance of improving the accessibility of our services where we can. Any feedback that we receive from users on accessibility issues will be investigated and we will prioritise improvements where possible.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

The website last underwent an external accessibility audit by the Digital Accessibility Centre in March 2017. This statement was prepared on 1 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 10^th of June, 2021. The next review will be 10^th December, 2021. The review of this statement will be carried out every 6 months.