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Thurston Website Accessibility Statement

Accessibility Statement for Thurston Parish Council

This website is run by Thurston Parish Council. We aim to ensure that as many people as possible are able to use this website. Generally that means you should be able to:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 300% without 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

We have also tried to ensure that we have made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

Go to AbilityNet to find 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 may not be fully accessible.

  • the text will not reflow in a single column when you change the size of the browser window
  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard
  • you cannot skip to the main content when using a screen reader

What to do if you cannot access parts of this Website

If you need information on this website in a different format we will happily provide it. Please contact the clerk to the Parish Council, either via email or telephone, with all such requests and we will get back to you as soon as possible:

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that are not listed on this page or if you think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, please contact the Parish Clerk about the issue by emailing: clerk@thurstonparishcouncil.gov.uk

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

This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Many of our older PDFs do not meet accessibility standards. For example, they may not be structured so they are accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2.

From September 2020 any new documents (PDFs or Word documents) loaded onto the website will include the following: Alternative text to be provided with visuals; meaningful hyperlink text added; colour not used to convey information; sufficient contrast is used for text and background colours; built in headings and styles are used; table structures to be simple with column header information.

The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23rd September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services. For example, we do not plan to fix copies of minutes.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 2nd September 2020. The test was carried out by the Clerk to the Parish Council on a non-technical/basic test. We used an approach to decide on a sample of pages to test with static content, links and pictures.

We assessed the following pages which had good examples of the items that needed testing and which can be found on this website:

  • Home page -  access to site
  • Home page - images
  • Parish Council - Meeting dates and agenda’s – text-based content page
  • Minutes page – Containing PDF documents in folders
  • Neighbourhood Plan pages – all of the above

A full explanation of the examples used for testing can be found by accessing this weblink: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/doing-a-basic-accessibility-check-if-you-cant-do-a-detailed-one/doing-a-basic-accessibility-check-if-you-cant-do-a-detailed-one

​​​​What we’re doing to improve accessibility

  • Regularly monitoring the accessibility of our website
  • Making our PDF documents (created after 22 September 2018) as accessible as possible.
  • Where possible, creating HTML pages rather than PDF documents
  • Continue to work to resolve all identified accessibility issues which are within our control and will release them to the website as soon as they are completed.

Thurston Parish 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.

This statement was prepared on 4th September 2020.

For technical information about this website's accessibility and the Website Accessibility Statement from our website provider, please use this link for full details