If you have been asked to send your written evidence to a committee by email, please include the following information in your covering email:

• Say who you are, including your name and email address
• Let us know if you are responding in a personal or professional capacity, and if you are representing an organisation
• Whether you would like your written evidence to be confidential (which means your evidence will be read but not published), with reasons for the request
• Whether you would like your evidence to be anonymous, without your name published
• Confirmation you are over 18 years of age, or,
  • if you are under 13 years old, permission (e.g. by email) from your parent or guardian for you to submit evidence.
  • if you’re between 13 and 17 years old, permission from your parents or guardian isn’t necessary, but we won’t publish your name alongside your evidence.
• Confirmation that you have permission from anyone who is identifiable within your evidence.

This guidance relates largely to written evidence submitted to a committee via email, in a Word document.

The Senedd does its best to make sure its webpages are accessible. This is to:

• enable people with disabilities to perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with information on the web; and
• respond to the needs of people using slow internet connections, or using mobile devices

You can help the Senedd to meet web content accessibility guidelines, and enable more people to access your evidence, by following the guidance below.

Please:

• avoid acronyms and abbreviations – where they are included, please ensure they are spelled out in full, the first time they are used
• submit a single document (preferably as a Word document) as your paper, with any tables, spreadsheets and annexes incorporated into the paper
• use headings for structure (we recommend using the standard Word formatting of Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.)
• if you are including links in your paper, these should be written as descriptions of where a reader will go, should they follow that link (i.e. not ‘click here’)
• include tables only when they are necessary for the purpose of presenting structured content. If you are using tables, please ensure they are a table in the paper itself (i.e. please don’t include an image of a table). Please ensure a table is made up of labelled rows and columns. Any notes to the table should be as separate text (i.e. not be presented by the creation of additional rows unrelated to the column headings). If Excel SpreadSheets are provided, please ensure they are ‘print ready,’ so that the information contained within can easily be produced to a printable output on A4 paper, without any need to adjust the data contained within
• include ‘alt-text’ for any images used in your document. Alt-text is a piece of ‘hidden’ text that describes an image used on a webpage or other electronic media, if for any reason a viewer cannot see the image itself. To add Alt Text you will typically (depending on your software) need to right click on the picture, select ‘Format Picture,’ and then the ‘’ icon (Layout and Properties). You will then be able to select ‘Alt Text.’ If in doubt about what alt-text to write, we recommend trying to imagine describing the image to someone over the phone
• align text to the left hand margin
• use font in at least size 12 (black colour)
• keep use of bold, underlining and italics to a minimum
• use numbered paragraphs
• use paper size A4 in portrait format
• maintain a 1.5cm page margin (footnotes are fine, but headers/footers can be problematic)
• if you wish to include page numbers, cite them on the left or right hand