Accessibility statement

Last reviewed date:

1 December 2025

This is an accessibility statement for open.efsa.europa.eu portal from the European Food Safety Authority, first published on 01 December 2025.

The European accessibility standard for ICT products and services EN 301 549 defines requirements for designers, developers, content managers and customer support to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. EFSA conducted a professional accessibility audit by an external evaluator and will periodically repeat it in the future to ensure the accessibility of Open EFSA portal.

Some parts of Open EFSA portal (listed under “Limitations and alternatives”) do not fully conform to accessibility standard EN 301 549 v 3.2.1 and EFSA is working to fix them.

Compatibility

Open EFSA portal is designed and tested to be compatible with the following assistive technologies:

Chrome browser with JAWS screen reader;
Safari browser in iOS with VoiceOver screen reader;
Chrome browser for Android with TalkBack screen reader.

Open EFSA portal’s conformance with accessibility standard EN 301 549 relies on HTML, CSS, JavaScript and WAI-ARIA to work with the web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your device.

Feedback and complaints

If you encounter accessibility barriers on Open EFSA portal, additional to those listed under “Limitations and alternatives”, or urgently need information which is currently not available in an accessible format, please e-mail accessibility [at] efsa.europa.eu (accessibility[at]efsa[dot]europa[dot]eu). Be sure to specify the web page or file that has the accessibility issue. We aim to respond to feedback within two business days.

Limitations and alternatives

Below is a list of known accessibility issues that EFSA is actively working to resolve. For some, there are known alternatives that are described together with the issues. For others, we are working to fix them and apologise for any inconvenience.

General

Page titles may not clearly describe the pages.
There is no skip link which would allow to bypass the navigation and navigate directly to the main content.
Most elements don't have visible focus styles when navigating with keyboard which can make it difficult to understand which element is in focus. Keyboard focus may occasionally disappear.
Navigation regions may not always be correctly defined for assistive technologies.
Not all texts respond to the browser’s or system's text size settings. Alternatively, you can use the browser’s zoom settings to increase the size of the entire page.
Some elements may not be fully visible or require side-to-side scrolling when the page has been zoomed in, text has been enlarged or when using a small screen.
Some texts, inputs, icons and buttons have low contrast which may make them difficult to read or see.
Headings are not always correctly programmatically marked up.
On rare occasions, lists and tables may be missing the correct markup for assistive technologies. Screen readers may not get information about the sorting of the table.
On rare occasions, screen readers do not announce which option or page is selected.
On some pages, the keyboard and screen reader focus order may not be logical. On iOS, keyboard may skip over some content. On Android, keyboard focus may get stuck in the footer.
Pop-ups may be focused as the last elements on the page. The pop-ups content may not be accessible with assistive technologies.
On rare occasions, screen reader may read out repetitive on unnecessary text. Some illustrative icons may be read out by screen readers.
Some error and success messages are not automatically announced by screen readers. Success messages may disappear automatically.

Links, buttons

Some links and buttons may not be usable with assistive technologies.
Some icon buttons may be missing meaningful text alternatives for screen readers.
The accessible name of a control may not always start with the visible label.
In list views, questions and consultations may be read out by screen readers as multiple links.
Some links have external link icons which are missing text alternatives for screen readers.
The page buttons in paginations and “Expand” buttons in comments are missing the correct markup for assistive technologies.
Some buttons are programmatically part of a heading which causes screen readers to read them out as heading elements.
Some copy, search and pagination buttons are very small and may be difficult to activate.

Input fields

Search and date input fields may be missing labels.
It may not be possible to enter or choose a date from the date fields using assistive technologies.
When manually entering an invalid date in the date field or an invalid page number in pagination, the input is automatically deleted and no error message is displayed. The date must be entered in format DD/MM/YYYY.
Select boxes may not be usable with some assistive technologies. Keyboard and screen reader focus may go inside a closed select box.
The “Search” fields and “Sorting” dropdowns do not always have the correct roles, which may create confusion for screen reader users.
On a rare occasion, screen readers may indicate that an input field is disabled although it is not.
When typing in a search box, suggestions or results are shown, but they are not always announced by and selectable with assistive technologies. Alternatively, in most cases, you can just activate the search, e.g. by clicking the “Enter” key.
On a rare occasion, search results may overflow the search modal, requiring two-way scrolling, and not having sufficient contrast.
Search results links may not be focusable with keyboard nor programmatically marked as links.

Issues that occur only on certain pages

After loading more results on "Questions" and "Consultations" pages, keyboard and screen reader focus may continue to the footer instead of moving to the newly loaded content.
On “Questions” page, when filters are applied, the amount of “results found” is updated, but screen readers don't announce that automatically.
Under consultations, there are "Submit comments" links which may be unclear for screen reader users because the links are not connected to the consultation titles. The links may not be usable with assistive technologies. Alternatively, you can open the consultation’s detail view and click the "Submit comments" link there.
On "Experts" page, the panels are clickable, but not focusable with keyboard nor programmatically marked as links.
On "Experts" page, when typing into the search box, the search function is activated automatically which significantly changes the page content.
On expert pages, some rows can be expanded to see additional roles, but the expanding buttons are not connected to the working group names which may be confusing for screen reader users.
On scientific panel pages, in the “Working Groups” table, the last column shows the status of the working group. The header of the column says “Show inactive working groups” which may be confusing.
On "Dossier" page, the tree view may not be accessible with all assistive technologies.