Accessibility Statement for Test Valley Borough Council Website

This accessibility statement applies to TestValley.gov.uk

This website is run by Test Valley Borough 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. This is always under review and we will continue to make every piece of information easy 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
  • live video streams do not have captions
  • Images published on our website are compliant with accessibility standards including alt text.  Some images may not contain alt text as they are used for testing parts of the website rather than being part of the website.  It is possible that these may be accessed via a search engine or website scrape and are therefore under review, as are any historical images that can be accessed in this way.

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:

  • email: info@testvalley.gov.uk
  • call: 01264 368000

We’ll acknowledge receipt of your request, forward it to the relevant department and the relevant department will get back to you in 7 working days.

If you cannot access the Google map on our ‘contact us’ page, call or email us via the contact details at the bottom of every page for directions.

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: website@testvalley.gov.uk or info@testvalley.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’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 deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment.

Our offices have audio induction loops.

Find out how to contact us at the bottom of every page.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Test Valley Borough 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 and exemptions listed below.

 

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).

We plan to add text alternatives for all images. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

We also plan to make some changes based on issues discovered in an accessibility review as a result of changes to our website.

  • Adding a pause function to our carousels to improve focus.
  • Address contrasting issues with colours on certain links.
  • Fix an issue with ARIA attributes.
  • Fix tabbing through content.

We are currently working to address these issues through a redesign. 

Disproportionate burden

Our forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website.

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 when the supplier contract is up for renewal.

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

PDFs and other documents

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, and forms published as Word documents. By September 2020, 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.

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

Live video

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

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

Our website is currently under full review, we hope to complete this review by 2022, with improvements to the website management system allowing us to improve our accessibility.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 22 September 2020. It was last reviewed on 2 February 2022.

This website was last tested on 2 February 2022. The test was carried out by Test Valley Borough Council.

We used this approach to deciding on a sample of pages to test, download a copy of our approach here. (pdf, 23kb)