Accessibility statement for Shropshire Council
Overview
This accessibility statement applies to the pages and services that come under the shropshire.gov.uk domain, which includes some services provided by third-party applications which can be found on sub-domains or sub-folders. Where this is not the case, separate statements will be provided to detail the level of compliance for that particular service.
This website is built and maintained by Shropshire 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 200% 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 know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:
- 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 or screen reader, or for those with visual impairments that affects how they see colour
- Our careers/job vacancies sub-site (careers.shropshire.gov.uk) is difficult to navigate using just a keyboard or screen reader, or for those with visual impairments that affects how they see colour
What to do if you cannot access parts of this website
Each section of our website has relevant contact details for you to contact services directly to request information in alternative formats, with some services offering web chat.
Alternatively, you can contact our Customer Services for support.
Reporting accessibility issues 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 use the Leave feedback form (this link is also in the footer across the website), or email web.manager@shropshire.gov.uk
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
If you do need to visit or ring, we have a number of customer service points around the county, and list our main telephone numbers on our website for easy reference.
Technical information about this website's accessibility
Shropshire 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 2.2 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
Non accessible content
The content listed below is not accessible for the following reasons.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
- Some PDFs are not structured with clear headings (1.3.1 and 2.4.6), or may not have a clear title (2.4.2). Where possible, these will be reviewed and updated. Those that cannot be updated (either through legal reasons or the disproportionate burden of time/effort to update) will be addressed by one or more of the following:
- consultation with services, reviewing and advising on the creation of new structured templates to ensure future PDFs are compliant
- discussions with suppliers to resolve issues
- Inaccessible third-party systems/forms provided by LiquidLogic and Servlec - some of these are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard or screen reader (2.1.1), or for those with visual impairments that affects how they see colour (1.4.3)
- Content and forms on careers.shropshire.gov.uk (provided by Hireserve) are difficult to navigate for those using just a keyboard or screen reader (1.3.1, 2.1.1, 2.4.1, 4.1.2), does not allow you to resize text without impacting the surrounding content or requiring scrolling horizontally (1.4.4, 1.4.10), or has other design issues for non-text content and use on non-contrasting colours (1.1.1, 1.4.1). PDFs on this site are not structured with clear headings (1.3.1 and 2.4.6), or may not have a clear title (2.4.2).
Disproportionate burden
Interactive tools and transactions
Some of our services are provided by third-party software and 'skinned' to look like our website. These include:
- The Webpay payments system
- The careers/job vacancies sub-site
- The Citizen Access system for council tax and business rates
- The ModernGov system providing our council meetings, agendas, minutes and councillor information
- The ArcGIS system providing our online maps
- The InPhase 'Performance portal'
- The Chipside parking appeal forms
- some forms created using Microsoft Forms (colour contrast issues)
- The library catalogue service
- The library ebook service
- The planning 'Public Access' service
- The Synergyweb free school meals application form
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 supplier contracts are up for renewal or when an upgrade is planned.
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 2.2 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. Where possible, we will review and replace those with accessible web pages or revised versions of the documents that are more clearly structured and titled.
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 where possible.
Live video
Live video streams do not have captions. This fails WCAG 2.2 success criterion 1.2.4 (captions - live).
We do not plan to add captions to live video streams because live video is exempt from meeting the accessibility regulations.
How we tested this website
We use a third-party tool to monitor our website. Alongside the automated testing, we periodically take a sample of pages across the website, such as service homepages, 'find my nearest' features and simple content pages and perform basic manual testing to ensure that the page content are navigable by keyboard, and structured clearly to help those using assistive technologies.
We are now committed to creating accessible new features for our main website, and review all new third-party services using a mixture of automated and manual tests to ensure compliance to the required standards.
This statement was prepared on 22 September 2019, revised 20/3/2024.