WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT FOR SALFORDS AND SIDLOW PARISH COUNCIL

INTRODUCTION:

Salfords and Sidlow Parish Council recognises the importance of providing a website that is available to the widest possible audience. We are committed to making our website accessible to everyone, including blind or partially sighted visitors who use screen readers. We will continue to be proactive to increase the accessibility and usability of our website in conjunction with current government guidelines in order to make it a user-friendly experience for everyone, regardless of ability.

WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY REGULATIONS 2018 AND ENFORCEMENT PROCEDURES:

Legislation

The Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) Accessibility Regulations 2018 requires public sector bodies, which includes local councils, to ensure reasonable adjustments are made to websites so they are accessible to people with various disabilities. These include:

• Impaired vision
• Motor difficulties
• Cognitive impairments or learning disabilities
• Deafness or impaired hearing

Salfords and Sidlow Parish Council will continue to ensure its website is accessible, in accordance with these regulations. 

This statement covers the website for salfordsandsidlowpc.org.uk. This accessibility statement applies to the domain website only

This website is run by Salfords and Sidlow Parish Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

• change colours, contrast levels and fonts
• zoom in up to 300% without the text spilling off the screen
• navigate most of the website using just a keyboard
• navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
• listen to most of the website using a screen reader 

We’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

HOW ACCESSIBLE THIS WEBSITE IS

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible such as:

• you may not be able to modify the line height or spacing of text
• most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
• live video streams do not have captions (we do not have video streams)

FEEDBACK AND CONTACT INFORMATION

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

email claire.minter@salfordsandsidlowpc.org.uk

call 01737 780339

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 7 days.

If you cannot view the map on our ‘contact us’ page, call or email us http://www.salfordsandsidlowpc.org.uk/contact for directions.

REPORTING ACCESSIBILITY PROBLEMS WITH THIS WEBSITE

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: 

email claire.minter@salfordsandsidlowpc.org.uk

call 01737 780339

ENFORCEMENT PROCEDURE

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 (the ‘accessibility regulations’). If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

CONTACTING US BY PHONE OR VISITING US IN PERSON

Find out how to contact us 

http://www.salfordsandsidlowpc.org.uk/contact.

email claire.minter@salfordsandsidlowpc.org.uk

call 01737 780339

TECHNICAL INFORMATION ABOUT THIS WEBSITE’S ACCESSIBILITY

Salfords and Sidlow Parish Council is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.

COMPLIANCE STATUS

The website is partially compliant as it meets most requirements of the WCAG 2.1 AA standard. 

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non compliances listed below.

NON ACCESSIBLE CONTENT

The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.

Non compliance with the accessibility regulations

• Some images such as our logo do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).

Navigation and accessing information

• There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option). This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.1 (bypass blocks).
• It’s not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.4 (orientation).
• It’s not possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.4.4 (resize text).

Interactive tools and transactions

• Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag.
• Our forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (information and relationships).

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with navigation and accessing information, and with interactive tools and transactions. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment when the supplier contract is up for renewal.

CONTENT THAT’S NOT WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THE ACCESSIBILITY REGULATIONS

PDFs and other documents

• Some of our older PDFs do not meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).
• Some of our PDFs are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information we must provide by law such as minutes and payments made. We believe that having every PDF as an HTML page would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning.

Live video

• We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

How we tested this website and accessibility statement

This website was last tested on 23 September 2020. The test was carried out by ourselves. We used this approach to decide on a sample of pages to test with static content, links and pictures. We tested:

• our main website platform, available at http://www.salfordsandsidlowpc.org.uk/

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We will continue to review the website on a regular basis and report to Council and make improvements as appropriate within guidelines.

We’re improving accessibility by carrying out accessibility checks on all our new documents.

We’re reviewing the accessibility of older documents that are covered by the accessibility regulations, starting with the ones which are being used the most and getting the highest number of unique page views.

We will develop a range of accessible documents templates for our staff to use and have an external partner in place to help us train staff across our entire organisation in how to create accessible documents.

 This statement was reviewed in May 2023