ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT FOR TENTERDEN TOWN COUNCIL WEBSITE
This Accessibility Statement applies to Tenterden Town Council’s website: https://www.tenterdentowncouncil.gov.uk/ This website is owned by Tenterden Town Council and jointly managed by the Town Council and Web Box Cardiff Ltd.
Our website is designed to be used by as many people as possible. You should be able to:
- zoom in up to 300% without problems;
- 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 have also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.
AbilityNet (https://mcmw.abilitynet.org.uk) can provide advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.
HOW ACCESSIBLE THIS WEBSITE IS
We know that 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;
- audio streams/recordings for meetings do not have captions.
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, please contact:
Email: townhall@tenterdentowncouncil.gov.uk
Phone: 01580 762271
Postal address: Town Hall, 24 High Street, Tenterden, Kent, TN30 6AN
We will consider your request and get back to you within two days.
REPORTING ACCESSIBILITY PROBLEMS WITH THIS WEBSITE
We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact: townhall@tenterdentowncouncil.gov.uk
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 are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, please contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).
CONTACTING US BY PHONE OR VISITING US IN PERSON
Information regarding a text relay service for people who are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment can be found on the OfCom Website
Our offices do not have audio induction loops, however if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.
Find out how to get in touch via our Contact Us page
TECHNICAL INFORMATION ABOUT THIS WEBSITE’S ACCESSIBILITY
Tenterden Town 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
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Non-Compliance with the Accessibility Regulations
- Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they are accessible to a screen reader. See WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value)
Disproportionate Burden
Not applicable.
Content that is 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 that they are accessible to a screen reader. The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services. For example, we do not plan to fix minutes of meetings prior to this date. However, we are willing to make any pre-September 2018 documents fully accessible on request.
Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
WHAT WE ARE DOING TO IMPROVE ACCESSIBILITY
The Town Council’s newly updated and revised website will be going live week commencing 23rd November 2020. This has been built taking into account the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard.
PREPARATION OF THIS ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT
This Statement was prepared on 19th November 2020.
The Website was last tested on 29th October 2019. The test was carried out by Web Box Cardiff Ltd using the following tools.
- https://validator.w3.org - the website was run through this checker and rectified any errors and recommendations that it provided to improve functionality and general HTML quality.
- http://wave.webaim.org - this specifically pointed out where aria-label or alt tags and other things that specifically affect screen readers etc needed correcting. New aria labels and alt tags to elements that got pointed out by this tool were added.
- https://www.powermapper.com/products/sortsite/ads/acc-accessibility-testing/ - this pointed out some more usability issues, such as buttons, not having and text associated with them. This tool scanned the entire site for errors. A couple of errors were still identified, but these are due to third-party tools that are being used on the site.
- Google Lighthouse Accessibility Audit - this identified only a single accessibility error that again is due to a third-party slider plugin.
- Read through the WCAG 2.1 AA standards as required and checked that everything required was in place. Contrast changer, text size changer, etc.
The standard required to meet is WCAG 2.1 AA, some of the above tools check for the higher WCAG 2.1 AAA standards also.