Stocksfield Parish Council is committed to providing an accessible website to ensure the content is available to the maximum number of users whatever their device or means of access. Changes will be made where these are reasonable and commensurate with the cost of doing so.
If you are unhappy with any part of this website from an accessibility point of view, or wish to make suggested changes, please contact the Clerk to the Parish Council and we will try to deal with your comments.
The site has been tested by some automatic testing tools including the Chrome Accessibility Insights testing extension.
An assessment is a manual experience in which you navigate through a set of tests that cover all WCAG 2.1 AA success criteria. Each test has one or more requirements that can be:
- Automated
- Assisted
- Manual
Below we set out the current state of the website from an accessibility point of view, after testing and assessment. We also set out what we intend to do about any issues raised.
Initial testing, i.e. the current state of play, has been Automated and Assisted in nature. When any issues raised by this phase are resolved a fuller manual inspection will be undertaken.
- There are eight points where colour contrast needs to be improved. These impact the following elements of the page:
- Four points are related to the accessibility controls for font resizing where the contrast with the background colour is insufficient. The threshold contrast ration is recommended as 4.5:1. Currently the site achieves 1.91:1 in this area.
- Three points refer to the colour of the “read more …” link which has insufficient colour contrast with the background. The threshold contrast ratio is recommended as 4.5:1. Currently the site achieves 3.83:1 in this area.
- The links in the footer also achieve a colour contrast of 3.83:1 (via manual inspection) and require improvement.
- The Facebook icon image has no alternative text. Fixed on 4th October 2020.
- The search field has no label. Fixed on 4th October 2020.
- Ensure links or controls that open new windows or frames do not open without a warning. In the footer of the site there are two links that do this. Amended on 4th October 2020 so that the title associated with the links indicates this before any other description in the title field.
We will be remedying all of the above within a month where possible. At that point we will retest the site and update this report.
Where information is provided as PDF documents, the Parish Council will also provide a html text only version of the information where feasible. This currently applies to all documents included in the list below produced since September 2020. The Parish Council is working back through documents to September 2018 to provide a similar facility. This will be completed as time permits but documents before September 2018 will not be treated in this manner.
PDF documents referred to above include:
- Minutes
- Policy and procedure
- Grant application forms are in writable PDF format and will be converted to an accessible format in the near future
- Financial statements relating to monthly payments and summaries, annual budget and year-end statements
There are additional PDF documents, such as monthly meeting papers, which are not included in the list above. Many of these originate from other organisations and the meeting papers often contain multiple tables. External audit reports are all scanned PDFs incorporating ‘wet’ signatures. Currently these will not be converted to text only documents. We will be asking that, where possible, we are provided with these documents in an accessible format in the future.
The Council is also aware of its environmental responsibilities and understands the increased costs, both financially and environmentally, to store PDF documents compared to HTML versions. The Council will no longer be publishing PDF versions of documents as a matter of routine where HTML versions are available. These steps will enhance the overall accessibility of the website.
Where the Content Management System (CMS) that generates the website fails to provide an accessible feature we will endeavour to provide a work around. If we cannot achieve this at reasonable cost and effort, we may need to await Release 4 of the CMS, due during 2020. At Release 4 of the CMS (which is currently at release 3.9.21) additional accessible features are provided and we will make use of these as we are able.
Should you be unable to view a PDF document on this site please contact the Clerk to the Parish Council to discuss alternative provisions.
Last revision: 7 January 2021