Accessibility statement for sponsor-a-stone.hrp.org.uk
Historic Royal Palaces is the independent charity that loves and looks after six of the most wonderful palaces in the world. We are committed to ensuring our website is accessible to as many people as possible.
This accessibility statement applies to www.sponsor-a-stone.hrp.org.uk
This website is run by Historic Royal Palaces. 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 fonts
- zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
- 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.
AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.
How accessible is our website?
We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible, for example:
- not all elements are accessible using a keyboard
- text does not meet sufficient contrast requirements against the page background
- the heading structure is not always correct
- accessible names are not provided or incorrectly given to images
- some content relies on use of colour alone
- the focus order is not always logical when navigating on both desktop and mobile environments
- page regions are not identified with ARIA landmarks
- buttons and form inputs lack appropriate accessible names
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 via email at [email protected] and our web team will deal with your report.
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) or for users in Northern Ireland, the Equalities Commission for Northern Ireland.
Contacting us to visit in person
If you need any assistance or information to help you plan a visit to one of our palaces, please contact us:
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 0333 320 6000
You can also read Access information for each of our palaces.
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Historic Royal Palaces 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 partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Disproportionate burden
Text alternatives
Accessible names are not provided for informative images, including informative images within PDF documents. This can result in content not being presented to screen reader users.
Decorative images have informative alternative attributes, which present unnecessary information to screen reader users.
Buttons do not have appropriate labels. Buttons without labels do not provide information about their functionality to screen reader users.
Form input fields lack an associated text label or descriptive title. Incorrectly associated labels do not provide functionality or information about the form control to screen reader users.
Adaptable
Page content within the PDFs on the ‘Purchase Confirmation’ page are not tagged. This may make them difficult to access for users who rely on assistive technologies like screen readers or braille displays.
Page regions are not identified with appropriate landmarks. This may be confusing to assistive technology users who navigate using landmarks.
For some input fields on the ‘Billing Details’ page, such as ‘Name’, ‘Address’’, and ‘Email address’, the autocomplete attribute is not present.
Distinguishable
Colour is solely used to convey information across both the ‘Sponsor a Stone’ and ‘View a Stone’ pages. Users who have problems distinguishing between colours may be unable to access the colour-dependent information.
A link within a paragraph of text in the cookies overlay lacks additional styling, such as an underline or bolding.
Text lacks contrast against its background. Users with low vision may have difficulty reading text that does not contrast with its background.
Rendering issues are present with text when zooming text only to 200% using browser zoom controls.
Some user interface components and graphical objects may not meet the contrast minimum of 3.5:1 when in both a selected and unselected state.
Content that appears on hover or focus within the ‘Payment Details’ page is unable to be dismissed without moving the pointer hover or keyboard focus and is not hoverable. Content which appears on hover can be difficult to perceive.
Keyboard accessible
Some content is inaccessible when using a keyboard to navigate the site. This includes selecting a stone, previous and next buttons, and back and footer links. This may make navigation difficult to users who navigate with a keyboard.
Navigation
A correctly formed heading structure is not always present to facilitate navigation across the site, with empty and skipped headings.
All pages have the same page title of “Sponsor a Stone”, which may cause navigation issues between tabs.
The focus order is not always logical when navigating with a keyboard, and with desktop and mobile screen readers enabled.
Multiple instances of generic link text such as ‘View available stones’, ‘View Stone’, and ‘Download Certificate’ are present, which do not sufficiently inform screen reader users where they will be navigated to upon interaction with the links.
Across both the ‘Sponsor A Stone’ and ‘View A Stone’ pages, empty previous and next links are present within the ‘You are viewing the’ section; and on the ‘Purchase Confirmation’ page, empty social links are present.
When tabbing the site, a consistently visible focus indicator is not always present. Keyboard users may have difficulty visually determining the component currently in focus.
Input modalities
Some of the stones present on the ‘Sponsor A Stone’ and ‘View A Stone’ pages do not provide sufficient size or spacing. Users may have difficulty clicking these user interface components.
Readable
The language of the ‘Home’ page is not correctly identified. People who use screen readers or other technologies that convert text into synthetic speech may have trouble navigating the pages.
Input
Form fields on the ‘Billing Details’ page do not specify that they are required.
Compatible
The stone user interface components on the ‘Sponsor A Stone’ and ‘View A Stone’ pages lack an accessible name.
When navigating to the “?” button for help with the security code, the additional content that appears is not announced via iOS VoiceOver.
Upon navigating the ‘View A Stone’ page with a screen reader enabled and submitting the search with invalid data, the red criteria copy that is visually present on the screen is not announced to the user via a screen reader.
We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues within the site. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will review this in May 2026 when the site is due to be decommissioned.
What we’re doing to improve accessibility
We plan to continue to improve the accessibility on this website over the next 12 months to ensure that new content and components are built to the highest WCAG standards where possible. We will test our design, products and content for accessibility.
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on 15 May 2025. It was last reviewed on 15 May 2025. The website was last tested on 11 November 2024. The test was carried out by Zoonou.
Zoonou used WCAG-EM to define a representative sample of pages and the test approach.