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Home » Accessibility Statement

Accessibility Statement

This accessibility statement applies to www.herefordshiresafeguardingboards.org.uk

This website is run by the Herefordshire Safeguarding Adults Board, Safeguarding Children Partnership, and Community Safety Partnership. We want as many people as possible to be able to access and 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 

AbilityNet has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

We have also made the website text as simple as possible to understand and are constantly reviewing and updating the website to improve this.

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
  • Live video streams do not have captions
  • Some of our online forms are difficult to navigate using just a keyboard

Feedback and contact information

If you need information on this website in a different format like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille:

email admin.sbu@herefordshire.gov.uk

call 01432 260100

We will consider your request and aim to respond in 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, contact: admin.sbu@herefordshire.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)

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

The Herefordshire Safeguarding Adults Boad, Safeguarding Children Partnership, and Community Safety Partners are committed to making this 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 exceptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

While the Safeguarding Board and Partnerships strive to adhere to the accepted guidelines and standards for accessibility and usability, it is not always possible to do so in all areas of the website.

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations

Images

Some images do not have a text alternative, so people using a screen reader cannot access the information. This fails WCAG 2.1 success criterion 1.1.1 (non-text content).

We plan to add text alternatives for all images. When we publish new content we will make sure our use of images meets accessibility standards.

PDFs and other documents

Many of our older PDFs and Word 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 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 if they’re not essential to providing our services.

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

Disproportionate burden

Navigation and accessing information

There is 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.

Interactive tools and transactions

Some of our interactive forms are difficult to navigate using a keyboard. For example, because some form controls are missing a ‘label’ tag.

Our forms are built and hosted through third party software and ‘skinned’ to look like our website.

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 the supplier contract is up for renewal.

Live video

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

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

  • We will continue to assess the accessibility of this website and work towards improving this over time.
  • Preparation of this accessibility statement
  • This statement was prepared on 18/07/2022 and will be reviewed on an annual basis.

We use SiteImprove to check the Accessibility compliance of all our webpages monthly.