Accessibility statement – Customs Clearance Service

Finnish Customs is committed to making its websites and online services accessible in accordance with the Act on the Provision of Digital Services (306/2019).

This accessibility statement concerns the Customs Clearance Service.

Other service alternatives

If you are not able to use the Customs Clearance Service, there are other alternatives for transactions with Customs. You can authorise someone else to declare the goods on your behalf via the service or you can buy the declaration as a service from a forwarding company.

You can also visit a customs office that provides customer service to give us your feedback. On our website, you will find the map locations of the customs offices with customer service and their opening hours.

Help regarding alternative transactions is available from the Customs Information Service, tel. 0295 5201.

See Customs’ instructions for other service alternatives.

The accessibility of the service

Current accessibility of the content of the service: partly meets the requirements laid down in the Finnish Act on the Provision of Digital Services.

The known problems with accessibility

The service still has some usability problems. The recognised problems with accessibility are described below. If you notice a problem in the service that is not included in the list, please contact us.  

The following content does not meet the requirements laid down in the Act on the Provision of Digital Services and will be fixed as soon as possible.

Tables

  • The service design uses tables, such as the one on the page “Choose the type of a new declaration”. The tables disrupt the screen reader user’s user experience and, because of them, the service reports presence of incomplete table structures in places where there actually is no table. Some of the information is also read more than once and it may be difficult to visualise entities. (WCAG 1.3.1)
  • The service has tables with columns without column headings. Some tables may contain false indications of the numbers of columns and rows of the table. (WCAG 1.3.1)
  • Some tables contain links and buttons with wrong role and name attributes. The screen reader may ignore these or it may be difficult to find them with the screen reader. (WCAG 4.1.2)

Form elements, such as buttons, check boxes, combo boxes and text fields  

  • Several form elements do not have labels attached to them in a way that allows them to be read by screen readers within the field. Some elements contain messages from the screen reader falsely indicating that the field is inactive, even though it would be available for the user to fill in. (WCAG 1.3.1)
  • Many form elements contain false indications of the mandatory status of the fields. As regards some of the elements, it has been either totally left out of the mandatory fields or merely marked visually by asterisk or marked programmatically. On the other hand, some of the form elements have been marked as mandatory, although they would not be mandatory for the function to be successful. (WCAG 1.3.1, WCAG 3.3.2)
  • In the case of potential errors, not all form elements show error messages directly under the element, but the error message has to be found elsewhere on the page. As the user completes a declaration it is only in the last phase of the form that the user finds the error list and it may be difficult to locate the errors. The errors detected are not clearly described to the users, and the users are not always provided with suggestions for correction, even though it would be possible to provide them. The accuracy of some of the relevant information is not checked before the storage. (WCAG 3.3.1, WCAG 3.3.3, WCAG 3.3.4)
  • The service has some buttons with labels that are not descriptive. Besides that, many buttons are attached with irrelevant information or information that gives a wrong impression of the functioning of the button. Some of the buttons are entirely missing name and label. There are buttons, the status of which (e.g. opened/closed, not in use) is not indicated to the screen reader users. (WCAG 2.4.6, WCAG 1.3.1, WCAG 4.1.2) 
  • Keyboard users have no access to most of the question mark buttons found in the service that give the user access to more information about questions on the form and other matters. (WCAG 2.1.1)

Other remarks concerning structure

  • Exclamation mark icons have been used in the tables and menus contained by the service in order to indicate events that the user should take into account. These icons do not have a text alternative, and no other indication of them is given to the screen reader users. (WCAG 1.1.1, WCAG 1.3.1)
  • Some texts in the service have been marked as headlines without actually being headlines. Furthermore, in some cases, the heading levels are illogical. (WCAG 1.3.1)
  • The service uses landmarks for setting borders between different sections, but the landmarks have not always been named descriptively. The service uses chapters and lists for sorting things, but these are in some cases used unnecessarily, and that can cause surplus clutter for screen reader users. (WCAG 1.3.1)
  • Some of the tool tip contents contained by the service open disturbingly over the rest of the content far away from the button that opened them and it can be difficult for users to see where to close the tool tip content. (WCAG 1.4.13)
  • The service has link texts that are not descriptive or that do not include all the relevant information. Furthermore, some of the links contain a false indication stating that a new tab has opened. (WCAG 2.4.4)
  • The service has some links whose visible link text does not fully correspond to their programmatic name. (WCAG 2.5.3)
  • There are some points in the service where the language has not been marked correctly, so the screen reader most likely pronounces them incorrectly. (WCAG 3.1.2)
  • The structure of the service does not fully correspond to the rules of grammar of the HTML language, which may cause problems of instability for the user of the service, especially when assistive technology is used. (WCAG 4.1.1)

The operation of the service

  • If the content is read by screen reader, the reading order of the content is not always logical, particularly if the user navigates backwards in the content. (WCAG 1.3.2)
  • The skip links contained by the service, such as “Skip to the content” and “Move up” link, are active, but they take the user to a wrong location on the page. (WCAG 2.4.1)
  • The focus of the screen reader is sometimes moved on different pages of the service in an illogical manner. Furthermore, it is not possible to find all the content in the reading mode of the screen reader, but the user has to switch between browser modes of the screen reader in order to find all the content. Also during navigation by keyboard, movement of the focus is sometimes illogical. (WCAG 2.4.3)
  • During various search functions, the search results are often suddenly filtered immediately after the user makes changes to a field. (WCAG 3.2.2)
  • Some of the status messages from the service are not descriptive. Furthermore, the status messages do not appear in all cases, for example, in case of a successful retrieval or storage.  (WCAG 4.1.3)

Drafting of the statement

Customs has assessed the accessibility of this service as follows:

  • The assessment was conducted by an external operator.
  • The statement was drafted on 12 February 2021.
  • The statement was last reviewed on 4 November 2022.

Feedback

We are happy to receive feedback on the accessibility of this service. 

  • Give feedback on accessibility to Customs by email: asiakaspalautteet@tulli.fi.
  • The Customs Clearance Unit of Finnish Customs is responsible for the accessibility of the Customs Clearance Service and will also respond to feedback on accessibility.
  • We aim to respond to feedback within five working days.
  • If you aren’t satisfied with the response you have received from Customs, you can also give feedback on accessibility to the Regional State Administrative Agencies: saavutettavuus@avi.fi.