Greater Manchester Fire Rescue Service Accessibility Statement

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service has admitted its website manchesterfire.gov.uk fails to meet basic accessibility standards for disabled users, with critical problems affecting screen reader users, keyboard navigators, and those with visual impairments.

The service's accessibility statement reveals that images lack text descriptions, making vital safety information inaccessible to blind users, while confusing heading structures and duplicate IDs break navigation for those using assistive technology.

Video content-crucial for fire safety education-often lacks subtitles, transcripts, or audio descriptions, and forms in Word and Excel formats create additional barriers for people with disabilities trying to report emergencies or request services.

The website fails multiple WCAG 2.2 AA requirements including low contrast buttons that visually impaired users cannot see, tables without proper headers that make data impossible to interpret, and missing focus indicators that leave keyboard-only users unable to identify clickable elements.