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Trade and Economic Security

Accessibility statement

Trade topics
  • Trade policy

This statement applies to content published on the domain: https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/

It does not apply to other content or websites published on any of its subdomains. These websites and their content will have their own specific accessibility statement.

This website is managed by the Directorate-General for Trade. It is designed to be used by as many people as possible, including people with disabilities.

You should be able to:

  • zoom up to 200% without problems;
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard, and;
  • navigate most of the website using a modern screen reader and speech recognition software (on your computer or phone).

This website is designed to comply with the technical standard for websites and mobile apps, EN 301 549,  v.3.2.1. This closely follows level ‘AA’ of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1.

 

Compliance status

This website is partially compliant with technical standard EN 301 549 v.3.2.1 and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 Level AA. See ‘Non-accessible content’ for more details.

The website was last tested on 29 May 2024.

 

Preparation of this statement

This statement was reviewed on 12 February 2025.

The statement is based on a representative sample of web pages by self-assessment, using a combination of manual and automated testing by an automated tool: Axe Monitor.

 

Feedback

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of the EU Trade website. Please let us know if you encounter any accessibility barriers:

We try to respond to feedback within 15 business days from the date of receipt of the enquiry by the responsible Commission department.

 

Compatibility with browsers and assistive technology

The EU Trade website is designed to be compatible with the following assistive technologies:

  • The latest versions of Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari browsers.
  • In combination with the latest versions of JAWS, NVDA, VoiceOver and TalkBack.

 

Technical specifications

The accessibility of the EU Trade website relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:

  • HTML
  • WAI-ARIA
  • CSS
  • JavaScript

 

Non-accessible content

Despite our best efforts to ensure accessibility of the EU Trade website, we are aware of some limitations, which we are working to fix. Below is a description of known limitations and potential solutions. Please contact us if you encounter an issue not listed below.

Known limitations for the Trade website:

  1. Video player – keyboard accessibility: We are aware of some issues with the keyboard accessibility of our video player (when selecting the caption language from the menu, it is not possible to use the arrow keys to move between languages, this can only be done with the TAB key).
  2. Audio description: Videos on this website do not have audio description.
  3. Missing title in a frame for video: When videos are embedded in a frame, the frame does not always have a title. We plan to fix this issue by end of March 2025.
  4. Graphs and charts – use of colour: Some graphs and charts on the website rely on colour alone to communicate information, which is confusing for people with colour vision deficiency. In charts where labels are not visually associated with the corresponding coloured section, clicking on the labels in the legends toggles the corresponding line, bar or section on or off, which allows users to check which label belongs to which part of the chart. 
  5. Heading hierarchy: Some headings do not follow the correct heading hierarchy, which can cause problems for screen reader users. We plan to fix this by end of March 2025.
  6. Organisation chart: The current version of visual organisation chart published is not accessible to people using a screen reader or users who rely on keyboard navigation. The Whoiswho is an accessible alternative for most of its content.
  7. Form fields: In the filter options, some form fields do not have a properly connected label. We plan to fix this by end of March 2025.
  8. External links open without warning: Some links open a new window (or tab) without warning. We plan to fix this by end of March 2025.
  9. Documents: Most documents are in PDF format and are not accessible; we are in the process of fixing this for documents published after 01/09/2018. Particularly complex documents, or documents produced by third parties, will not be made accessibility-compliant.