-

Accessibility Statement

Overview

This website is managed by Bridgnorth Town 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:

  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • documents pre-dating September 2018 (and some more recent documents; however these are being reviewed and amended where possible each month)
  • maps
  • finance documents
  • some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard or screen reader
  • some images may not have descriptive alt text

What to do if you cannot access parts of this website

Each section of our website has relevant contact details for you to contact services directly to request information in alternative formats.

Alternatively, you can contact our offices for support.

Reporting accessibility issues 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 use contact us on 01746 762231 or email [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

If you do need to visit or ring, we can be located in College House, St. Leonard’s Close, Bridgnorth, Shropshire, WV16 4EJ or telephone 01746 762231.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Bridgnorth 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.

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 not accessible for the following reasons.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Pictures of event or information posters, when provided by a third party – where possible we provide the information from the picture, within the web page’s text (via HTML). We will encourage all providers of these pictures to provide accessible alternatives in future.

Some PDFs published since September 2018 are not in an accessible format, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. With our limited resources, where possible, we aim to update one month of documents from the period September 2018 – September 2020 every month, with the aim of completing this by September 2022. However if you require a certain document from this period that isn’t in an accessible format, please contact us for an alternative format. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of PDFs meets accessibility standards.

Disproportionate burden

Some of the services listed on our website are provided by third-party organisations and linked to our website. These include:

Navigation and accessing information

It’s not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content.

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

Interactive Maps

Maps displayed by Google Maps – we don’t control how Google Maps displays information, but where possible we provide addresses within the web page’s text (via HTML). When Google makes their map output accessible, we will update our technology accordingly

Financial Documents

Our finance reports are provided through a 3rd party and are therefore not accessible. If you require any financial information, please contact the office to discuss alternative formats.

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with navigation and accessing information. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make regular assessments throughout the year.

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).

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, documents provided by third parties and forms published as Word documents. By December 2020, where possible, 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 meeting agendas or minutes for meetings which were published prior to 23 September 2018.

As of September 2020, any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards where possible.

Live video

Live video streams do not have captions. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.2.4 (captions – live).

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

How we tested this website

This website was last tested in December 2023. Tests were carried out by both internal systems and our website provider, Aubergine 262.

We tested all pages in our sitemap.

We are now committed to creating accessible new features for our main website, and review all new third-party services using a mixture of automated and manual tests to ensure compliance to the required standards. Automated tests of the entire website will be carried out every three months.

This statement was updated on 26th January 2021.