Accessibility statement

This accessibility statement applies to www.dacorum.gov.uk. It does not apply to content on other subdomains - for example the ModernGov site (democracy.dacorum.gov.uk), which publishes council agendas, minutes, and councillor and meeting information.

This website is run by Dacorum 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:

  • change colours, contrast levels and fonts
  • zoom in up to 300 per cent 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’ve also made 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 use content performance platform Siteimprove to monitor the accessibility of our website. As of 23 September 2022, we had an accessibility score of 92.4 out of 100 against a Government industry benchmark of 86.1. However, we know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

  • many of our PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • there are links missing text alternatives on our recruitment pages
  • the breadcrumb text for 'Home' does not have sufficient colour contrast and is smaller sized 
  • the keyboard cannot view the close pop-up box when the pop-up box is open as the "Our use of cookies" hides all of the corner buttons, therefore it is not clear for the user
  • when the mouse hovers over the menu along the top, the text is dark green on a grey background and does not have sufficient colour contrast
  • when the keyboard tabs onto link text, the text becomes white on a white background
  • the container element is empty on a number of pages.

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format, such as accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille, please email webteam@dacorum.gov.uk. We’ll consider your request and get back to you within five working days.

Alternatively, use the link at the bottom of each page to "Provide feedback on this page".

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 email webteam@dacorum.gov.uk. Let us know the web address (URL) of the page and a description of the problem.

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).

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

We provide a text relay service for people who are deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment.

Our offices have audio induction loops, or if you contact us before your visit we can arrange a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Dacorum 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, due to the non-compliances listed below:

Non-accessible content

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

PDF documents

  • Many of our PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software. As of 23 September 2022, we are aware of 779 PDF documents on our site that have been published on our site since 23 September 2018 - when the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations came into force - that have accessibility issues. Although we have now added page title information to 774 of these documents (WCAG 2.4.2), we are aware that there are further issues, including not being structured correctly (WCAG 4.1.2), missing headings (WCAG 2.4.10) and missing text alternatives (WCAG 1.1).
  • By December 2023, we plan to either fix any PDF documents (published after 23 September 2018) that had a unique page view of more than 100 during the period 22 September 2021 to 23 September 2022 or replace them with HTML pages. We will strive to meet accessibility standards on any new PDF documents we publish. 

Disproportionate burden

PDFs and other documents on this site

We are aware that there are documents on this site that are not accessible. We aim to work through the documents, which between 22 September 2021 and 23 September 2022, had a unique page view of 100 or more, to make them accessible. However, we consider that making the rest of the PDFs and documents on the site accessible, with minimal evidence of demand, to be a disproportionate burden on the Council.

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

PDFs

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. 

Live video

We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.

What are we doing to improve accessibility

To improve accessibility we:

  • monitor new content to make sure it meets the standards before it is published
  • review existing pages when making updates to ensure they are compliant
  • where possible publish information as web pages rather than PDF documents
  • provide guidance and training to teams within the council on creating accessible content and documents.
  • The www.dacorum.gov.uk website is fully tested against A, AA, AAA, ARIA authoring, and accessibility best practices every five days. The tests are carried out by Siteimprove.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 23 September 2022. It was last reviewed and updated on 3 January 2023.

Our current estimate is that all accessibility fixes will be completed by 31 December 2023.

Page Last Updated: Wednesday, 06 December 2023 at 04:43 PM

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