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Accessibility statement

Our commitment to opening up digital services to everyone.

We aim to make this website accessible to all. We try to ensure all pages conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA in line with the EU Accessibility Directive. Our accessibility statement below sets out this commitment and what we are doing to improve.

This website is run by West Northamptonshire Council. There should be no barriers for anyone who wants to use this website.

For example, you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in without the text spilling off the screen
  • navigate most of the website using just a keyboard (including skip to content)
  • navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
  • listen to most of the website using a screen reader
  • easily understand any content

Accessibility features

AbilityNet provides guidance about how to:

How accessible is this website?

We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible.

For example:

  • some older Word and PDF documents aren’t fully accessible for people using screen readers
  • Google Maps are not fully accessible we have provided relecent links to google to provide assistance.

There are some issues we are aware of that are difficult to fix because of how our content management system works:

  • some HTML pages are styled using inline styles rather than external stylesheets - this means any custom stylesheets you set up may not work on some of our pages
  • our expandable images don't display alt text for screen readers - we’re working to fix this

Let us know if you can’t access parts of this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page, please email communications@westnorthants.gov.uk or call 0300 126 7000 and ask to speak to someone in the Communicaitons Team.

How we tested this website

We have carried out user testing with visually impaired people on a number of our most important tasks. If you would like to take part in future user testing, please email communications@westnorthants.gov.uk.

We also monitor automated tests of our website using Siteimprove and Axe

We work continuously with our developers to resolve issues and improve the accessibility of our websites.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. If you’re not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

West Northamptonshire Council is committed to making its website's 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.

Issues with PDFs and other 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.

  • Some of our PDFs and other documents are not formatted so they’re accessible for people using screen readers.
  • From September 2020 onwards, all new published documents should meet accessibility standards.

If you require a copy of a document prior to September 2020 that we haven't yet made accessible, please contact us at communications@westnorthants.gov.uk and we will endeavour to send it to you.

Issues with images, video and audio

Some of our images have missing or incorrect labels. We are working to correct this as an ongoing task.

Issues with interactive tools and transactions

We are aware that some internal applications and externally hosted systems may not comply with accessibility and usability standards. Some are old software that we cannot easily change.

We’re working with suppliers to fix what we can ahead of our move to a unitary authority model in April 2021.

Some parts of this site link to or use content provided by other websites and these are not always as accessible as our site. Examples of these are:

  • YouTube videos
  • Embedded tweets and Facebook posts
  • Google maps (as outlined previously)

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We continuously improve our website’s accessibility based on user testing and automated tests. We hold weekly accessibility meetings to measure our progress.

We also run mandatory accessibility training courses for our web content authors and promote the importance of accessibility using our internal communication channels.

We are speaking to our third-party suppliers about improving the accessibility of their products.

In April 2021, Northamptonshire’s existing county, borough and district councils were replaced by two councils – one for the west of the county and one for the north. We will balance our efforts between making our existing website more accessible wherever possible and helping to ensure any new unitary website under our control is accessible to all.

 

This statement was prepared on 21 September 2020.