Accessibility statement for darlington.gov.uk and healthydarlington.co.uk
Using this website
This accessibility statement applies to https://www.darlington.gov.ukand http://www.healthydarlington.co.uk. This website is run by Darlington 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 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 tried to make the website text as simple as possible to understand.
AbilityNet [external link] has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.
How accessible this website is
Most of this website is compliant with the W3C WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility standard. However, there are some parts of this website that are not fully accessible:
- pages with Google Maps
- most of our older pdf documents
Feedback and contact information
If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we’re not meeting accessibility requirements, contact: [email protected].
If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:
- email [email protected]
We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 7 days.
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) [external link].
Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Darlington 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
The website has been tested against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2 AA standard.
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.2 [external link] AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.
Non-accessible content
The content listed below is non-accessible for the following reasons.
Tables with complex headers do not map correctly
No data cells assigned to table header - Tables with multi row headers do not map their header cells to data cells correctly. This is not compliant with Success Criterion 1.3.1: Information and relationships. This is a bug in the current CMS which will be resolved in the upgrade which is scheduled to be completed in spring 2025.
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
PDFs and Other Documents
Some of the PDF's on our website are not in an accessible format due to not being machine readable or missing certain landmarks such as headers. This doesn’t meet WCAG 2.2 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).
Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations
Older PDFs and other documents
Many of our older PDFs and Word documents don’t meet accessibility standards - for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader. This doesn’t 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.
The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 [external link] if they’re not essential to providing our services. For example, we don’t plan to fix old issues of the One Darlington magazine.
Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
Maps
Most of our interactive maps are provided by Google or ESRI. The images they use have no alt attribute (1.1.1 Non-text Content). Where this is the case we will make sure that address or location data that is presented on the map is available as text within that web page.
What we are doing to improve accessibility
Our accessibility road map below shows how we aim to improve accessibility across this website.
| Issue | Target Fix Date |
|---|---|
| 4.1.2 (name, role value) | Winter 2024 |
| 1.3.1 (Information and relationships) | Spring 2025 |
Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on 02/08/2019. It was last reviewed on 13/11/2024 and is updated monthly.
This website is tested every 10 days against the WCAG 2.2 AA standard.
The tests are carried out by the Darlington Borough Council web team using Siteimprove’s[external link] accessibility reports. Tests are scheduled automatically and are monitored by the web team.