South Tarrant Valley Parish Council

Serving the Local Comunity

Accessibility statement for South Tarrant Valley Group Parish Council
This accessibility statement applies to the current website found at https://southtarrantparishcouncil.co.uk.

This website is run by the South Tarrant Valley Group Parish Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. 

The website is built using WordPress and the Astra theme – we are not responsible for the theme functionality but we will, with our service provider try to ensure that this website is accessible – For example, that means you may 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 have done our utmost to ensure our website is accessible however, due to a third party template being used, there may be some parts of this website which are not fully accessible:

  • the text may not reflow in a single column when you change the size of the browser window
  • you may not be able to modify the line height or spacing of text
  • some of our online forms may be difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • you may not be able to skip to the main content when using a screen reader

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 will look in to your request and get back to you in 14 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, please contact: Kate Huck, South Tarrant Valley Group Parish Council Clerk by email at southtarrantvalley@dorset-aptc.gov.uk or by phone on 07721 406133

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 have raised an issue or complaint with us and you’re not happy with how we respond to your issue / complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person
Find out how to contact South Tarrant Valley Parish Council.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility
South Tarrant Valley Group 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 partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non-accessible content
None currently identified.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
All images have, to the best of our knowledge, the required ALT text as required vis WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).

When we publish new content we will try to ensure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Disproportionate burden

 It is our intention to ensure our website is as accessible as possible for all users and as such if any issues are identified we will do our utmost to correct these as required but we are unable to guarantee all issues can be cost effectively resolved.

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).

It may not be possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping.

Interactive tools and transactions

Some of our interactive forms may be difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag.

Some of our older minutes would only be published in PDF format 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 publish older copies of the Meeting Minutes  within the Minutes Archive as these are not deemed as essential whereas all new minutes will be published in both HTML and PDF formats.

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 of our website in the next 6 months to ascertain of there are any areas requiring changes to meet the minimum accessibility requirements.

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with the latest Parish Council Meeting minutes. From 01st January 2020 all Meeting Agendas and Minutes of meetings will be published as both accessible HTML pages and PDF documents.

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 the PDF documents within the Minutes Archive or 3rd Party content supplied to us for publishing on our website (such as road closure notifications that are supplied as PDF documents).

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

Live video
We do not plan to use Live video

Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on 27th August 2020. It was last reviewed on 27th August 2020.

This website was last tested on 27th August 2020. The test was carried out by ICL Web Design using the WAVE Accessibility Access Tool (https://wave.webaim.org)

We used this approach to do a full site test using recognised 3rd party accessibility testing tools and we have done some manual testing on all pages to check for accessibility

You can read the full accessibility test report at https://wave.webaim.org by entering our website domain name as required