Accessibility Statement for East Herts Council Website

We aim to ensure that our website is accessible and usable to as many people as possible. It is has been designed to conform with Level AA of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the minimum standard required by the UK Government.

This accessibility statement applies to www.eastherts.gov.uk.

This website has been developed for and is managed by East Herts District 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 is this website

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

  • most old 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
  • some of our online services are hosted by third-party suppliers and you may find navigating these services difficult depending on their level of web accessibility. This includes, but is not restricted to, democracy.eastherts.gov.uk

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:

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 3 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, contact: 

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

We provide a text relay service for people who are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment.
Our offices have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.
Find out how to contact us: www.eastherts.gov.uk/contactus

Technical information about www.eastherts.gov.uk accessibility

East Herts District 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:

PDF documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be marked up so they’re accessible to a screen reader.
If a PDF or Word document is essential to providing our services we will look to fix these or replace them with an accessible HTML page or web form.
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 don’t plan to fix the following document:
Annual Audit Letter 2015

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards unless we determine that they represent a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. Ultimately, wherever possible, we will try to provide an accessible HTML version of the information as the primary source.

External Websites

Our website branches off to a number of external sites for different council functions such as our payment portal and our FOI system.  We are working with them in order to ensure they are compliant with the very guidelines set out above but as we do not directly manage these sites, it is out of our direct control.

Here is the accessibility statement for our online Revenue and Benefits portal. 

Non-accessible content - non compliance with regulations

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

  • Printed minutes 02nd-Mar-2021 19.00 Council.pdf 

The content uses an old template which has since been fixed to make accessible. This document is in a table format which cannot be read in order by a screen reader. We are working to resolve this document by March 2022. 

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 4 November 2021. It was last reviewed on 2 February 2022. 

We have Silktide web monitoring software in place to check the accessibility of this website on an ongoing basis. 

How we tested eastherts.gov.uk

eastherts.gov.uk was last tested on 2 February 2022.  The test was carried out by Silktide. All pages of the website and PDF documents within the website were tested. 

We scored 72/100 for accessibility. 86.6% is compliant for level A WCAG 2.1 checks, 64.9% is compliant for level AA WCAG 2.1 and 50.4% is compliant for level AAA WCAG 2.1 checks.

Accessibility Score. Level A 86.6%, Level AA 64.9% Level AAA 50.4%

 

 

Please contact customer.services@eastherts.gov.uk by email if you would like further details on the report.



 

 

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