Accessibility statement for Otterbourne Parish Council website

This accessibility statement applies to the Parish Council website hosted at www.otterbourneparishcouncil.org, online newsletter/email updates syndicated by the Parish Council (via MailChimp) and all other digital assets distributed by the Parish Council.

This website is run by Otterbourne 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 (including the most recent versions of JAWS, NVDA and VoiceOver)

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:

• you cannot 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
• some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
• you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader
• there’s a limit to how far you can magnify the map on our ‘contact us’ page

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 us at [email protected]

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 30 days.
If you cannot view the map on our Contact us page, or email us at [email protected] 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, please contact: Parish Clerk at [email protected]

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 by visiting Contact us

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Otterbourne 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

This website is not compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. The ‘non-compliances and exemptions’ are listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some images 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).

We plan to add text alternatives for all images by September 2021. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Disproportionate burden

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).

All of our page titles are H2 rather than the H1. This is due to the software used build the website and its non-semantic nature. This may make it more difficult for a screen reader to understand the primary context of our pages.

Interactive tools and transactions

Our Latest News widget on our homepage is provided by a third party and is embedded using iframes as required. This may make it difficult for a screen reader to access the new articles. However the same articles are accessible directly via the News and Events page.

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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 in 12 months.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By September 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we do not plan to fix any PDFs hosted on our website that were published before this date.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Live video

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

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Our accessibility roadmap shows how and when we plan to improve accessibility on this website.

Accessibility Roadmap

All new pages added to the website will be created with the corrected semantic markup and page headers to make such pages more accessible to screen readers. [From Sep 2020]

We will correct all pages which do not have the correctly structured page headings [By Mar 2021]

We will also make sure that any new web pages added are created with the correct semantic structure to make the context of the page more understandable and accessible to screen readers. [From Sep 2020]

We will engage industry experts on a voluntary basis to help us review and resolve where possible items which currently have been identified as having a disproportionate burden to fix. [By Sep 2021]

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 18th September 2020. It was last reviewed on 18th September 2020.

This website was last tested on 7th August 2020. The test was carried out by Otterbourne Parish Council with the help of volunteers.