Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations
Keyboard Accessible – WCAG 2.1.1
The back to the top button was not accessible using the keyboard. We have worked with our developers to correct this as of 10 May 2023 for keyboard users.
Focus Visible – WCAG 2.4.7
When tabbing through articles under ‘News highlights’, the keyboard focus was not fully visible for users as each article tabbed 10 times before moving onto the next element. This error has been fixed by our developers as of 10 May 2023.
Links across webpages were identified as not being fully visible when receiving focus. As of 10 May 2023 we have increased the focus indicator size and an additional ‘Orange’ highlight colour to be used for the outline when these elements are in focus.
Contrast Minimum – WCAG 1.4.3
It was identified that at 200% zoom, when the keyboard tabs onto our ‘We recommend’ section on the homepage there was poor colour contrast. The contrast levels for this have been amended and improved with a change from our developers as of 10 May 2023.
On our homepage, elements of the text ‘By caring for our unique surroundings today, we can continue to enjoy them for years to come’ had poor colour contrast on a background image. This has also been amended by our developers as of the 10 May.
Links across webpages were identified as having poor colour contrast when receiving focus. The text is light blue on a white background did not have sufficient colour contrast for the size text. The colour contrast have been improved by our developers. We have also increased the focus indicator by size and added an additional ‘Orange’ highlight colour to be used for the outline when the element is in focus.
Focus Order – WCAG 2.4.3
It was identified when the search bar was closed, the keyboard tabbed back onto ‘Things to do’ in the top-level navigation, instead of continuing to tab throughout the webpage, which could be confusing for users. As of 10 May 2023 our developers have implement a script to recall the previous tab position if the search window is closed without use.
Link Purpose – WCAG 2.4.4
It was identified that Social Media icons on our Get in Touch plage did not describe the purpose of their links. These have been removed as of 10 May 2023. Links to third party sites in the Footer of our website has been labelled that they will open in a new tab.
On Input – WCAG 2.0 A 3.2.2
Our search page on the website has had its magnifying glass icon replaced with a clearly labelled “Search” submit button as of 10 May 2023.
Issues with PDFs and other documents
Many of our older PDFs and other documents don’t meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be marked up so they’re accessible to a screen reader.
Some of our documents are essential to providing our services. For example, we have PDFs with information on how users can access our planning service, and forms published as Word documents. We have a programme of work currently in progress to either recreate these documents as an accessible PDF or an HTML webpage.
At the end of May 2023, we are investigating further training for staff with a third-party contractor to revised in-house brand guidelines that will include structure PDF templates to ensure all new documents have consistent and accessible heading structures and reading orders.
We are continuing to remediate PDFs published since September 2018 and hope to have this work complete by November 2023. We will update this accessibility statement when this work is complete.
The accessibility regulations don’t require us to fix PDFs or other documents published before 23 September 2018 if they are not essential to providing our services. We aim to ensure that any new documents we publish meet accessibility standards. If there are any documents that you are unable to access, please contact us for an accessible version. See ‘Feedback and contact information’ above in this statement for further information.
