Accessibility Statement

This website is run by Ashington Town Council. Our aim is to make this website as accessible to as many people as possible.
We continuosly review and improve this website and intend to continue to improve on accessibility as new technology evolves.

Our aim is to allow visitors to do the following:

• alter 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 (Opens in a new window) has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

How accessible is this website

We know some parts of this website aren't fully accessible:

some of our online services are hosted by third-party suppliers and you may find navigating these services difficult depending on their level of web accessibility - you can contact us using the details below to ask for alternative formats.

most older PDF, Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents are not fully accessible to screen reader software

many of our videos are embedded from YouTube and may feature labelling from YouTube itself, which is incorrect or not sufficiently descriptive

What to do if you can not access parts of this website

If you need information on this website in a different format - like accessible PDF, large print, easy read, audio recording or braille.
Please contact the council as soon as possible by phone (01670) 624 521 or email Email: clerk@ashingtontowncouncil.gov.uk

Please make sure you provide:

the service area, document name and/or the web address (URL) of the page the content is on

a description of the format you need. For example; audio CD, braille, BSL or large print

Web team
Email: clerk@ashingtontowncouncil.gov.uk Tel: (01670) 624 521
If you can't view the map on our Council offices page, please Contact us for directions.

Reporting accessibility problems with this website
We are constantly working to make our website as accessible and usable as possible for every user. There are times, however when we don't get it right the first time we publish something.
If you find any problems that aren't listed on this page or think we're not meeting the requirements of the accessibility regulations, contact the Web team:

clerk@ashingtontowncouncil.gov.uk

Telephone: (01670) 624 521

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing the accessibility regulations. If you are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) (Opens in a new window)

Contacting us by phone or visiting us in person

Our offices have audio induction loops.
Find out how to contact us or call (01670) 624 521.

Technical information about this website's accessibility

Ashington Town Council is committed to making its website accessible, in accordance with the Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018.
This website is partially compliant with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 (Opens in a new window) AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Non-accessible content
Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations includes the following:

1. Issues with 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.

The Accessibility regulations 2018 - PDF's (Opens in a new window) 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.
Some of our resource documents, such as posters, are designed to be downloaded and printed, so these may not be fully accessible.

Some documents that are essential to providing our services, such as forms published as Word documents, may not yet be accessible. We are working through these to create HTML pages and accessible documents.

2. Issues with images, video and audio
Many of our videos are embedded from YouTube and may feature labelling from YouTube itself, which is incorrect or not sufficiently descriptive.

Audio recordings of meetings do not have transcripts.

Where we provide audio recordings for council meetings we don't plan to provide transcripts as we also provide the minutes of these meetings. We will make another assessment for any other audio recordings we provide when the supplier contract is up for renewal.

How we tested this website

This website was last tested on 18th September 2020. The test was carried out by the Web team at Widescope Web Design - the councils' web development contractors.
We use the accessibility checking service from Siteimprove (Opens in a new window) to automatically test and report on accessibility issues with our website.

The Siteimprove reports:

identify the current status of accessibility based on the A, AA and AAA ratings

identify solutions to resolve any accessibility issues

identify a tracking service towards compliance

delegate and co-ordinate any accessibility tasks to the right team. For example; content designers, developers or user experience designers

Our main website platform, is available at:

https://www.ashingtontowncouncil.gov.uk

What we're doing to improve accessibility

Our accessibility roadmap shows how and when we plan to improve accessibility on this website.

Now

Update accessibility statement - done

Document accessibility audit - done

Next

Accessibility audit website - done

Future

Action issues arising from accessibility audit

Accessibility audit - third party software

Accessibility audit - subsites

This statement was prepared on 6 December 2021