Accessibility Statement

Introduction

The Hedgeley Parish Council (HPC) website is hosted by Breamish Valley (www.breamishvalley.com) as a sub-site. This Accessibility Statement refers specifically to the Hedgeley Parish Council webpages and not those of the host website. The following webpages, together with linked Hedgeley Parish Council content (e.g. minutes of meetings, agendas, policy documents), constitute the Hedgeley Parish Council website:

Note: If you continue to browse and use the Hedgeley Parish Council website you are also agreeing to comply with and be bound by the Breamish Valley website terms and conditions.

Using the Hedgeley Parish Council website

This website is run by Hedgeley 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:

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 tried to make 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 the Hedgeley Parish Council website is

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

most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
scanned PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader

What to do if you cannot access parts of the Hedgeley Parish Council website

If you need information on this website in a different format – like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille – please email the Parish Clerk or phone the Parish Clerk on 01669 621565.

We’ll consider your request and aim to get back to you in 20 working days.

Reporting accessibility problems with the Hedgeley Parish Council website

We’re keen 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, please email the Parish Clerk or phone the Parish Clerk on 01669 621565.

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).

Technical information about the Hedgeley Parish Council website’s accessibility

Hedgeley 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.

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

Issues with PDFs

Many of our older PDF documents don’t meet accessibility standards. For example, they may not be marked up so they are accessible to a screen reader.

The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. We intend to reformat essential PDF documents from 23 Sep 2018 to the present date so that they are accessible. We aim to do this by 23 September 2020. All future PDF documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Links to PDF documents

Users are not informed that links will open a PDF document.

By 23 September 2020 we intend to add a ‘link will open a PDF document’ image or text to PDF documents published on or after 23 September 2018.

Issues with navigating just using a keyboard

There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option).

Resolution of this issue will require expert HTML and CSS coding amendments to the website theme. Given the relatively small number of navigational elements (6), resolving this may be a disproportionate burden. However, Hedgeley Parish Council will investigate this further with a view to determining if a reasonable adjustment can be made or whether this is indeed a disproportionate burden. We aim to do this by 23 March 2021.

Issues with error messages

The ‘Page Not Found’ error message shown if a user types in an incorrect URL is styled for the host website. This may be confusing to users who may think that they have left the Hedgeley Parish Council website.

The host website error page will, therefore, be redesigned to include a more obvious and accessibility compliant link back to the Hedgeley Parish Council webpages. It is aimed to complete this work by 1 November 2020.

How we tested the Hedgeley Parish Council website

This website was last tested on 28 June 2020. The test was carried out by local resident Graham Williamson.

A so-called ‘basic Check’ was carried out. Government Guidelines allow local councils to perform a Basic Check if they do not have the expertise to do a detailed check themselves and paying a third party would place a ‘disproportionate burden’ on them, i.e. a burden or cost that is too much for the organisation to reasonably bear. Hedgeley Parish Council determined that a detailed check would constitute a disproportionate burden.

Every Hedgeley Parish Council static webpage, archive list of Meetings posts, archive list of News posts, and an example of both a single Meetings post and a single News post were checked for compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1.

Three main means of checking were undertaken: