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Accessibility statement for the Companies House service

About this service

This accessibility statement applies to the ‘Find and update company information' service.

This service is run by Companies House. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this service. For example, that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 300% without the text disappearing off the screen
  • navigate most of the service using just a keyboard
  • navigate most of the service using speech recognition software
  • listen to most of the service using a screen reader (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

We’ve also made the website text simple to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible this service is

We know some parts of this service aren’t fully accessible:

  • some PDF documents are not accessible in a few ways including missing text alternatives and missing document structure
  • due to a known bug in the Chrome web browser, in some circumstances users of assistive technology such as screen readers may get presented with incorrect information when using our accounts filing service
  • some pagination links do meet recommended minimum size

Reporting accessibility problems with this service

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this service. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, you can find contact details on our accessibility support for Companies House users page.

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 service’s accessibility

Companies House is committed to making its website accessible in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

This service is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed in the next section.

Users of screen reading technology

In some circumstances, users of screen reader technology may get presented with incorrect information when using our accounts filing service. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.2 Success Criterion 3.3.2 (Labels or Instructions). This is a known bug in the Chrome web browser - these types of bugs are usually fixed by future updates to the browser.

PDFs and other documents

Many of our PDFs don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.2 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value). We are currently fixing these PDFs.

Pagination links

Pagination links do not meet a minimum size or have sufficient spacing around them, so may be difficult to activate for users with dexterity limitations. This doesn’t meet WCAG success criterion 2.5.8 target size (minimum). We plan to fix this issue by December 2024.

How we tested this service

We regularly carry out internal tests for compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 level A and level AA using a variety of manual and automated testing tools.

This service was last (externally) audited on 19 July 2022. The audit was carried out by the Digital Accessibility Centre.

They tested:

  • Sign in/Register
  • Search for a company
  • Search for a company officer
  • Your filings
  • The company profile

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

To improve this service's accessibility, we:

  • work with real users who have accessibility issues to make sure that our services meet their needs
  • carry out internal tests for compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 level A and level AA
  • work with external agencies in major UK cities to perform usability research with users
  • recruit customers through our user panel to take part in sessions at our usability lab in Cardiff
  • build and test our services to meet government accessibility requirements

Read our blogs about usability to find out more about our user research work.

This statement was prepared on 7 May 2020. It was last updated on 11 October 2024.