Accessibility Statement for Huntingdonshire District Council

This accessibility statement applies to the Huntingdonshire District Council website huntingdonshire.gov.uk.

This website is run by Huntingdonshire District Council in partnership with 3C ICT.

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% 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 Silktide third party software to monitor and fix our website accessibility.

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible:

you cannot modify the line height or spacing of text
some older PDF documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software
live video streams do not have captions
our maps are not fully navigable with a keyboard (you cannot tab to pins).

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like an accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille please email digital.team@3csharedservices.org or call 01480 388388.

We’ll consider your request and get back to you within 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, please contact digital.team@3csharedservices.org.

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

Our offices have audio induction loops in our Customer Services department.

Find out how to contact us.

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Huntingdonshire District 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 and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Interactive controls

Not all interactive components on a page are sufficiently large (WCAG AAA2.5.5). We have raised this issue with our developers to fix as soon as possible.

PDFs

A small number of our PDFs documents don’t meet accessibility standards.

Some PDFs:

have no headings specified or the headings do not follow a logical order (WCAG A 1.3.1)
do not specify a default language (WCAG A 3.1.1)
do not have sufficient text contrast (WCAG A 1.4.3)
are not tagged (WCAG A 1.3.1).

We are working to make these documents accessible as soon as possible. All new PDFs we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Navigable

Some of our links use the same text for different destinations (WCAG A 2.4.4). We are working to update the link text as soon as possible.

Not all controls on a page clearly indicate when they have been selected by the keyboard (WCAG AAA2.4.13). We have raised this issue with our developers to fix as soon as possible.

Headings

The headings in the A-Z do not contain machine-readable text content. We have raised this issue with our developers to fix.

Disproportionate burden

Elections documents

Many of the elections documents are created by the government/The Electoral Commission and the format legally cannot be amended.

Planning Public Access documents

Any documents that have been signed in person or produced by third parties are not accessible on our Planning Public Access site. This is because the software within the system coverts these files into scans, causing them to be images instead. We consider this to be a disproportionate burden because it is something we do not have control over. However, we will raise this issue with the supplier so that we comply with WCAG 2.1.

Financial statements

Some of our financial statements (such as expenditure over £250 and procurement card expenditure) are produced in Excel so pre-set heading styles can’t be tagged. We believe it’s a disproportionate burden to produce the statement of account in Word, as data values would be lost.

Modern.gov documents

Some documents created after council/committee meetings (such as minutes and decisions) may have been approved in their existing format by councillors and therefore cannot easily be changed. Identifying and changing these to be accessible would require input and sign off from councillors from council services and from councillors who may no longer be serving. We believe it is a disproportionate burden to update the document formatting now.

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. We are working to fix any remaining documents that fall under this category 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. For example, we do not plan to fix old election results documents.

Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Documents provided by third parties

Some of our documents are written or provided by third parties. Third-party content that is not funded, developed by, or under the control of Huntingdonshire District Council is exempt from the accessibility regulations.

Live video

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

Maps

Our maps are either not used for navigational purposes or, if they are, we provide information in another format, so are exempt from the accessibility regulations.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 27 August 2019. It was last reviewed on 5 March 2024.

The Digital Team will continue to test the site on a weekly basis and fix any issues as they arise. Our testing covers the whole site and all PDFs.

We use a combination of methods to check this website, including:

automated software (Silktide)
manual sampling (using Axe and manual testing).

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