Puddletown Area Parish Council

What is Website Accessibility?
Website accessibility is the practice and application of methos to ensure that a website or mobile application (and the information published on it) is accessible to all users without barriers and specifically for those users with disabilities or impairments that use assistive technology.
The website must meet the needs of those users with disabilities that include, but not limited to:
• Impaired vision
• Motor difficulties
• Cognitive impairments
• Learning disabilities
• Deafness or impaired hearing.
Websites must be coded and published in a way that allows users, whether with the aid of assistive technology such as screen readers and other software and hardware-based technology that helps those with disabilities to use a computer, or through controls within their browser, to access the information on the page This includes the text, files and documents or other assets published on it.
The website must be able to have its text enlarged and be sufficiently clear, have a good level of colour and contrast and a page layout and navigation that does not present any barriers for users with disabilities or those who use the assistive technology in ways other than by monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
Website accessibility s not limited to just viewing the website in a computer browse but also the mobile phone experience of the website and any mobile application too.
For the most part and historically, website accessibility has not been a requirement for any website owner. However, with the wider adoption of a more inclusive approach and accessibility for all, website accessibility has been made a legal requirement for all UK Public Bodies to meet since 23rd September 2018.

What is WCAG2.1AA Accessibility Compliance?
The accessibility nature of a website is measure according to guidance and agreed levels of use as set own by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) under the WCAG (Website Content Accessibility Guidelines) Standard. These guidelines are made up from different levels according to the level of measures that the website needs to include and build on the existing obligation to people who have a disability under the Equality Act 2010. These say that all UK service providers must consider ‘reasonable adjustment’ for disabled people.
WCAG 2.1 has 3 ratings, A, AA & AAA. UK Public Bodies need to meet the level WCAG2.1 AA compliance and this is part of The Public Sector Bodies (Website and Mobile Application) (no. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018 which came into force 23rd September 2018 for compliance no later than September 2020. This must be done whilst adhering to The Transparency Code.
A – Minimum Level
Without addressing these items, barriers exist that cannot be overcome by assistive technology. This level affects that broadest group with the most benefits and is essential.
AA – More accessible
With the minimum level of support, some barriers will still exist which impact certain groups of users. The criteria at this level establish a level of accessibility which should work with most assistive technology on desktops and mobile devices. Addressing Level AA criteria may impact the look of a page or affect site logic to a greater extent.

Site Specific – Introduction
This accessibility statement applies to www.corfecastleparishcouncil.gov.uk.
This website is run by Puddletown Area Parish Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:
• 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.

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.
• some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard.
Puddletown Area Parish Council publishes content on this domain and is responsible for making sure it meets the accessibility regulations. We will update the statement when issues are fixed or when we expect them to be fixed.

Feedback and contact information.
If you need information on this website in a different format, please contact the Clerk and include in your message:
• your email address.
• your phone number.
• the web address (URL) of the content you wish to receive.

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, contact: Michelle Harrington, Clerk on 01202 670105, or email clerk@corfecastleparishcouncil.gov.uk or via the contact us form on www.corfecastleparishcouncil.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 email.
Puddletown Area Parish Council do not have offices, as the Clerk works from home. However, you can contact us by telephone or email. Telephone 01202 670105 or email clerk@corfecastleparishcouncil.gov.uk

Technical information about this website’s accessibility
Puddletown Area 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.

Compliance status
This website is currently partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1 standard, due to the non- compliances listed below.

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
• There may be pages with read more / click here links. See WCAG 2.1 Success Criterion 4.4.
• There may be some pages where HTML isn’t perfectly formed, such as stray end tags. See WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.1 (Parsing).
• 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. See WCAG 2.1 success criterion 4.1.2 (name, role value).
• Some images on the website pages may not have a text alternative, so the information on them isn’t available to people using a screen reader. See WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).
When we publish new content, we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility
Any new PDF’s or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.
When we publish new content, we’ll make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

Navigation and accessing information.
There’s no way to skip the repeated content in the page header (for example, a ‘skip to main content’ option).
It’s not always possible to change the device orientation from horizontal to vertical without making it more difficult to view the content.
It’s not possible for users to change text size without some of the content overlapping.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations.
PDFs and other documents – a large portion of the PDF documents don’t specify the language in which the content is presented. There is a high chance this will prevent screen readers being able to parse through the information and thereby violates WCAG 2.1 Level (A) 3.1.1. Moving forward PDFs will be generated specifying language and content structure to enable them to be more accessible.

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.
The accessibility regulations do not require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018. Any new PDFs or Word documents we publish will meet accessibility standards.

Preparation of this accessibility statement
This statement was prepared on 26th February 2025. It was last reviewed on 26th February 2025.
This website was last tested on 19th February 2025. The test was carried out by the Clerk.