Accessibility Statement

Accessibility statement for Ashcott Parish Council

This website is run by Ashcott 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 (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

  • the contrast ratio on cookie notification popup is insufficient

  • tooltip buttons in the Embedded PDF viewer are not accessible to screen readers due to lacking an 'accessible name'

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

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

email: ashcottpc@gmail.com

tel: (01458) 860827

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

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, use the contact details above to let us know.

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 this website’s accessibility

Ashcott 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.

Non accessible content

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

Non compliance with the accessibility regulations

Disproportionate burden

For the benefit of the majority of our residents, we occasionally include copies of (or links to) documents from external sources that contain relevant information. We do not assess or adapt these externally supplied documents to ensure full accessibility. To do so would be a disproportionate burden.

The contrast ratio on the cookie notification banner is code supplied with the hosting platform and as such has a disproportionate burden to create custom code to adapt this.

The lack off accessible name on the tooltip buttons in the PDF embedded viewer is code supplied with the hosting platform and as such has a disproportionate burden to create custom code to adapt this.

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

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents 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).

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 minutes of earlier Parish Council meetings.

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

How we tested this website

This website was last tested in August 2020. The test was carried out by Blue Dixie IT Ltd on behalf of Ashcott Parish Council. We chose a sample of representative pages selected on the basis that together they encompassed all the different types of structures and documents used across all the web pages. Testing utilised a mixture of automatic scanners and visual inspection to cover potential issues that would not be detected by automatic tools. Following the tests, the Parish Council commissioned a small number of changes to existing documents and underlying page structures to address the issues identified.

A complete copy of the test results is available on request.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We are presently reviewing our method for publishing meeting minutes and other PDF documents in order to improve their accessibility. Our aim is to have these improvements in place before December 2020.

This statement was prepared on 28 October 2020.