Website Accessibility

Accessibility statement for Mappleton Parish Council

This website is run by Mappleton Parish Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website.
We’ve 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:
  • you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
  • most older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
  • 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 like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:
Send an email to: clerk.mappletonpc@gmail.com
Call: 01335 300 102
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 30 working days.
 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 contact the Clerk.

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 please let us know.
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Mappleton 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.
However, some organisations like small Parish Councils will not have the expertise to do a detailed check themselves and paying a third party would place a ‘disproportionate burden’ on them. This means a burden or cost that is too much for the organisation to reasonably bear.
This applies to Mappleton Parish Council and the Clerk has undertaken a basic check instead – 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

Interactive tools and transactions

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 2021.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations – PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word documents do not meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This does not meet WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).
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 2021, 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.  This applies to Agendas, Minutes and the Annual Return documents – the latter is supplied by the external Auditor.
Any PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards where possible from September 2021.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 10th February 2020. The test was carried out by the Clerk, Mappleton Parish Council.
All the pages were tested and headings added, information on page content provided, a search bar was added, link text tested, navigation tested e.g. the pages can be navigated using the keyboard.
The homepage and the Agendas and Minutes page were tested for accessibility using the free screenreader NVDA on 8th September 2020.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

From September 2021 we aim to ensure that Word documents are natively accessible.  Additionally, we will inform the user that the link will open a Word document.  Because Word documents have limitations in accessibility and require a separate program, HTML content should usually be used in place of or in addition to the Word document.