Accessibility

This accessibility statement applies to www.stevenage.gov.uk.

We aim to ensure that this website is accessible and usable to as many people as possible. It has been designed to conform with Level AA of the W3C's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the minimum standard required by the UK Government.

This website is run by Stevenage 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:

• 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 are working on making 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

• ‘Top Tasks’ and ‘All services’ tabs on the home page have incorrect Aria attributes.
• Some pages have scrollable elements that can’t be operated by keyboard
• Page region without an accessible name
• Hidden element has focusable content
• Many of our PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format please email website@stevenage.gov.uk.

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 5 working days.

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, please use our feedback form to let us know.

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 Services EASS.

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Stevenage 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.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

• Mark Navigation as lists. Some pages have more than one ‘call to action’. This fails WCAG A 1.3.1: Info and Relationships.
• Specify a title for all frames. Pages are showing an empty iframe from a third-party application embedded into the website. This fails WCAG A 2.4.1: Bypass Blocks.

404 page (page not found) has the issues listed below:

• Two adjacent links are pointing to the same destination. This fails WCAG A 1.1.1: Non-text Content.
• There are two empty links. This fails WCAG A 4.1.2: Name, Role Value.
• Two links worded the same go to different destinations. This fails WCAG A 2.4.4: Link Purpose (In Context).
• Page does not have a title. This fails WCAG A 2.4.2: Page Titled.

We are working with our web supplier to resolve these issues.

PDF and other documents

Many of our PDFs don’t meet accessibility standards – for example they may not be structured to make them accessible to a screen reader – this does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2.

The reading order of some pdf documents have not been set correctly. These do not meet WCAG Reference:1.3.2 Meaningful Sequence (Level A) and 2.4.3 Focus Order (Level A).

Form Controls – PDF Incorrect labels. There are form controls within some pdf documents which do not have descriptive text for screen reader users. WCAG Reference:1.3.1 Info and Relationships (Level A) and 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value (Level A).

Any PDFs that are essential to providing services, for example forms or information leaflets, will be replaced with online forms or HTML pages. We are currently working on these issues.

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 our Local Plan examination documents as these are reference documents that date back to 2017.

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.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 22 September 2020. It was reviewed on 6 October 2022.

This website was last tested 13 August 2020 by the Digital Accessibility Centre (DAC). The accessibility issues with the code highlighted by the DAC have been addressed, and the site was retested in March 2021.

We have Silktide web monitoring software in place, have used Axe 4.7.1 and WebAIM to check the accessibility of individual pages.