CrossCountry Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to the www.crosscountry.co.uk/ domain.

This website is run by CrossCountry Trains. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to do the following:

• 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)
• access the website on smaller devices

We’ve also made the website’s text as simple to understand as we can.

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 all text on the website
• Some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
• Some images have missing or inadequate alternative text
• Keyboard users cannot always identify which element of a page has keyboard focus
• The heading structure is inconsistent in places, and some lines of content look like headings visually but do not function as headings for assistive technology users
• Some parts of the website insert new content into a page without notifying assistive technology that new content has been provided
• Most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software

More information on accessibility issues appears in Non-accessible content, below.

If you need information on this website in a different format, such as accessible PDF, large print, easy read or audio recording, feel free to contact us on our contact page (www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/customer-service/contact-us-and-faqs)

We’ll get back to you on your request as soon as possible.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that we haven’t listed on this page, or if you think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, we’d love to hear from you. Please send us a message through our contact page (www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk/customer-service/contact-us/general-enquiries) in which you describe the problem and tell us which page you were using when it happened.

Enforcement procedure

If you contact us with a complaint and you are not happy with our response, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 on legislation.gov.uk (the "accessibility regulations").

CrossCountry is committed to making its websites accessible, in accordance with the accessibility regulations.

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the noncompliance’s and exemptions listed below.

The content listed below is inaccessible for the following reasons.

Noncompliance with the accessibility regulations

This section lists the key ways in which this website fails to meet the WCAG 2.1 success criteria. It includes all violations of A and AA success criteria and all issues the testing found to be serious or critical. It includes minor issues only if they relate to a Level A criterion. The issues appear in numerical order of the applicable success criteria.

Some meaningful images (including images with links) and icons have missing or inadequate alternative text. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 1.1.1 (Non-text Content, Level A). We plan to ensure that all non-decorative images have meaningful alt text by December 2024.

Some elements in some forms have missing or empty labels. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criteria: 1.1.1 (Non-text Content, Level A); 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships, Level A); 2.4.4 (Link Purpose (in context), Level A); 2.4.6 (Headings and Labels, Level AA); 3.3.2 (Label or Instructions, Level A). We plan to ensure that all form elements have exactly one label by December 2024.

Some forms contain sets of related elements that are not designated as a group. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criteria: 1.3.1 (Info and Relationships, Level A); 3.3.2 (Label or Instructions, Level A). We plan to assign groupings to each set of related form elements by December 2024.

Not all elements can be parsed due to missing start and end tags, duplicate attributes and nesting to their specifications. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 4.1.1 (Parsing, Level A). We plan to ensure that all HTML is validated by December 2024.

Some elements have inadequate colour contrast, so some people may be unable to read or understand them. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 1.4.3 (Contrast (Minimum), Level AA). We plan to bring the colour contrast of all text and images into compliance by December 2024.

Some content relies on colour to convey meaning. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 1.4.1 (Use of Color, Level A). We plan to provide alternatives, other than colour to convey any meaning by December 2024.

Some parts of the site do not adapt to increased text spacing. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 1.4.12 (Text Spacing, Level AA). We plan to ensure that the text spacing responds to all relevant user settings for the spacing of lines, paragraphs, letters and words by December 2024.

Some parts of the site become difficult or impossible to use when text is resized or reflowed (depending on the level of magnification). This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 1.4.4 (Resize text, Level AA); 1.4.10 (Reflow, Level AA). We plan to ensure that the content is not cut off and there is no loss of functionality when zoomed up to 200% and no horizontal scrolling is present at 400% by December 2024.

Some parts of the website cannot be accessed via the keyboard. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 2.1.1 (Keyboard, Level A). We plan to ensure that all parts of the site can be accessed via keyboard by December 2024.

Some links and buttons fail to indicate their purpose, in some cases because they contain no link or button text. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 2.4.4 (Link Purpose, Level A). We plan to update all links so that they indicate their purpose by December 2024.

Some parts of the website fail to make the keyboard focus visible. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 2.4.7 (Focus Visible, Level AA). We plan to ensure that, by December 2024, the keyboard focus will always be visible throughout the website.

Some parts of the website’s keyboard focus order do not preserve meaning and operability, this includes modal dialogue boxes. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 2.4.3 (Focus Order, Level A). We plan to ensure that, by December 2024, the keyboard focus will always be logical and preserve meaning and operability.

Some parts of the website do not notify assistive technology users that form is successful, due to the way the form is validated. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criteria: 3.3.1 (Error Identification, Level A); 3.3.2 (Label or Instructions, Level A). We plan to ensure that, by December 2024, all forms will notify assistive technology that form submissions are successful.

Some video content relies on auto-generated captions. This fails the following WCAG 2.1 success criterion: 1.2.2 (Captions (Pre-recorded), Level A). We plan to ensure that, by December 2024, all videos have verified caption tracks.

Some PDF documents do not identify the file type or file size and are not fully accessible to screen reader software and/or keyboard navigation. This fails some of the WCAG 2.1 success criteria PDF1 through PDF23. We will address this issue going forward by December 2024. Whenever we publish new PDF content, we will make sure that the information in it can be accessed using screen readers and that we also provide HTML versions of that content.

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

Some of our PDF and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on products. We plan to fix these documents or replace them with accessible HTML pages by December 2024.

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.

This website underwent a partial third-party accessibility audit in February 2023. A large development cycle to fix the accessibility issues is currently underway. This accessibility statement has been prepared to reflect the results of the February accessibility audit.

This statement was prepared on 17th February 2023.

This website was tested in January 2023 by a 3rd party agency, who performed an expert evaluation of over 15 pages against all level A and AA success criteria of WCAG 2.1. Content was selected to make sure a good representation of different pages, templates and components were tested as well as key content and user journeys.

This website's accessibility will be reviewed on a regular basis. The next review will take place in September 2024. We will update this accessibility statement with any relevant changes.