Category Archives: Governance

Accessibility statement for stertparish.com

This accessibility statement applies to the website www.stertparish.com belonging to Stert Parish Council, Wiltshire.

This website is run by Stert Parish Council and operated by WordPress, as a blog site. It has the capabilities for zooming in to 300% without the text spilling off the screen and navigating most of the website using just the keyboard. However, users are not able to:

• change colours, contrast levels and fonts
• 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’ve also made the website text as simple as possible to understand.

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website are not 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
• live video streams do not have captions
• 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

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read:

• call William Howkins on 01380 729 638
• email william@whowkins.com

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 7 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, contact William Howkins.

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).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Stert 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.

Compliance status

This website is not compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 AA standard. The ‘non-compliances and exemptions’ are listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).

We plan to add text alternatives for all images by September 2020. When we publish new content we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Disproportionate burden

Since the website is built on a simple blogging format, it is not possible to change colours, contrast levels and fonts, navigate the website using speech recognition software or listen to the website using a screen reader.

Stert is a very small parish with only some 150 residents and a precept of £1700 per annum. The cost of hiring an IT expert for 3 days at £1500/day to prepare an accessibility statement is clearly beyond the PC’s resources. A recent questionnaire to village residents has unanimously indicated that residents do not feel the need to change the present website and that the costs of doing so would not be not justified. The PC therefore claims that doing so would represent a disproportionate burden.

Navigation and accessing information

There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option).

It’s not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content. 

It’s not possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping.

Interactive tools and transactions

Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag.

Our forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website.

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing the issues with navigation and accessing information, and with interactive tools and transactions. We believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. We will make another assessment when the supplier contract is up for renewal, likely to be in one year’s time.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

PDFs and other documents

Some of our PDFs and Word documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our services, and forms published as Word documents. By September 2020, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages.

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.

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 18th August 2020. It has not been reviewed or tested.

Internal Audit 2019:20

Audit 4

Audit 3

Audit 2

Audit 1

Exemption certificate

To read the Notice of Public Rights, 2018, click on  Notice of Public RIghts 2018.

To see the Financial Regulations governing Stert PC’s accounts, click Fin Regs