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Guidance

Accessibility statement

Horsham District Council’s is committed to ensuring digital accessibility for people with disabilities. We are continually improving the user experience for everyone, and applying the relevant accessibility standards.

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
  • Use the Recite tool to aid with your use of the website

The Horsham District Council corporate website is built using the Squiz Matrix content management system.

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.

Measures to support accessibility

Horsham District Council takes the following measures to ensure accessibility of Horsham District Council’s corporate website:

  • Include accessibility throughout our internal policies
  • Integrate accessibility into our procurement practices
  • Provide continual accessibility training for our staff
  • Include people with disabilities in our user research programmes
  • Employ formal accessibility quality assurance methods
  • Maintain an accessibility improvement roadmap

Conformance status

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) defines requirements for designers and developers to improve accessibility for people with disabilities. It defines three levels of conformance: Level A, Level AA, and Level AAA.

Horsham District Council’s corporate website is partially conformant with WCAG 2.1 level AA. Partially conformant means that some parts of the content do not fully conform to the accessibility standard.

Additional accessibility considerations

Although our goal is WCAG 2.1 Level AA conformance, we have also applied some Level AAA Success Criteria.

Feedback

We welcome your feedback on the accessibility of Horsham District Council’s corporate website.

Please let us know if you encounter accessibility barriers on Horsham District Council’s corporate website:

  • Phone: 01403 215100
  • Email: communications@horsham.gov.uk
  • Postal address: Parkside, Chart Way, Horsham RH12 1RL

We try to respond to feedback within 5 working days.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has useful tips on contacting organisations about inaccessible websites.

Formal complaints

We aim to respond to accessibility feedback within 5 working days, and to propose a solution within 10 working days.

You are entitled to escalate a complaint to the Council’s complaints officer yoursay@horsham.gov.uk, should you be dissatisfied with our response to you.

Technical specifications

Accessibility of Horsham District Council’s corporate website relies on the following technologies to work with the particular combination of web browser and any assistive technologies or plugins installed on your computer:

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Javascript

These technologies are relied upon for conformance with the accessibility standards used.

Compatibility with browsers and assistive technology

Horsham District Council’s corporate website is designed to be compatible with the following assistive technologies:

  • Screen reader, font size, colour theme, ruler, screen mask, dictionary, languages, text-mode, audio download, screen magnifying, adjustable settings, reset button, user guide, keyboard navigation

Horsham District Council’s corporate website is designed to be compatible with the following browsers:

  • Safari, Chrome, IE, Edge, Samsung internet, Firefox, Safari (in-app), Amazon silk, Android webview, Opera, Opera Mini, Android browser, UC browser, Bitdiscovery, Blackberry, DDG-Android-3.1.0, Maxthon, Mozilla, Mozilla Compatible Agent, Puffin, PS4, SeaMonkey, YaBrowser, BrowserNG, Iron

Horsham District Council’s corporate website is designed to be compatible with the following operating systems:

  • iOS, Windows, Android, Macintosh, Chrome OS, Linux, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Xbox, Tizen, SymbianOS, Google TV

Horsham District Council’s corporate website is not compatible with:

  • Dillo, iCab, Lunascape, Lynx, Mosaic, NetSurf

Known accessibility issues

As part of our commitment to accessibility we are required to publish where we know there are issues with our website.

Limitations and alternatives

Despite our best efforts to ensure accessibility of Horsham District Council’s corporate website, there may be some limitations.

Below is a description of known limitations, and potential solutions. Please contact us if you observe an issue not listed below.

Known limitations for Horsham District Council’s corporate website:

  1. Images: uploaded images may not have text alternatives because we cannot ensure the quality of contributions. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content). We monitor images and typically repair issues within 10 working days. Please email communications@horsham.gov.uk
  2. PDF documents: might not be suitable with current assistive technologies because they were not formatted correctly to support accessibility. We aim to reformat documents to new formats upon request within 10 working days. Please contact communications@horsham.gov.uk for support.
  3. Our forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (information and relationships).
  4. Some table heading cells do not include scope. This doesn’t meet the WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (information and relationships). We are working to add scope manually to tables and convert tables into bullet lists where applicable.
  5. Slider controls do not change appearance when selected using a keyboard. This doesn’t meet the WCAG 1.2 success criterion 2.4.7 (Focus visible)
  6. You can’t modify the line height or spacing of text.
  7. Some older videos don’t have captions or transcripts. We are working to update our videos to ensure they all include captions and transcripts.
  8. There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option). This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 2.4.1 (bypass blocks).
  9. Some elements, for example accordions, have been created to have the same ID across the site. This doesn’t meet the WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (information and relationships) and success criterion 4.1.1 (parsing).
  10. Some HTML5 and WAI-ARIA landmarks aren’t applied to the section of the page that corresponds to their type. This doesn’t meet the WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.3.1 (information and relationships).
  11. The Council uses Hotjar to receive website feedback from users. This doesn’t meet the WCAG 2.1. Please email communications@horsham.gov.uk as an alternative way to provide feedback.

Disproportionate burden

Navigation and accessing information

None.

Interactive tools and transactions

None

Third party content

Our site includes third party content and functionality.

Depending on our relationship with the third party, we cannot always guarantee its accessibility.

Links to other websites

For the benefit of our users we link to other websites, including:

  • News websites
  • Social media platforms
  • Official information sources, such as The Met Office, GOV.UK or NHS.UK.

We are not responsible for the accessibility of these or any other websites we do not manage.

Third party platforms

We often create content which is hosted on third party platforms. This includes:

  • Content we create for social media, such as Facebook or Twitter
  • Video which we host on YouTube or Vimeo
  • Data we supply to national databases

We are responsible for ensuring the content we supply meets accessibility requirements; however, we are not responsible for the accessibility of the platform itself.

For example, when we add video to one of our YouTube channels, we will ensure any subtitling, captions and audio-description are included as required. However, we are not responsible for the accessibility of the video player itself.

Assessment approach

Horsham District Council assessed the accessibility of Horsham District Council’s corporate website by the following approaches:

  • Internal and external user research testing
  • Silktide automated reporting and benchmarking

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).

Formal approval of this accessibility statement

This accessibility statement has been formally approved by the Council's Head of Technology Services. To view a signed version of this statement please email communications@horsham.gov.uk.

Last update

This statement was last updated on 1 April. We update this statement quarterly and will next review it on 1 July 2020.
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