LEDBURY TOWN COUNCIL WEBSITE ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT
Ledbury Town Council recognise the importance of providing a website that is accessible to all user groups, including the disabled, the visually impaired and those with motor deficiencies and cognitive disabilities.
This statement explains the accessibility features we have implemented to help you use our website. They help improve navigation for screen readers, keyboard navigation and text-only browsers among other things.
Please let us know if you have any questions or feedback regarding the accessibility of this site or if you experience any difficulty using it.
General Information
We have designed this site with accessibility in mind. Some of the general features include:
- The use of clear, simple language which is easy to understand.
- The use of common web conventions.
- Avoiding the use of blinking or flickering elements.
- The use of validated HTML and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
Standards Compliance
We have strived to ensure our website conforms to level A compliance as specified by the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG2.1). In some cases, the website provides enhanced features via JavaScript. Our goal is to provide equivalent functionality for users who are not able to use JavaScript and we are working hard to achieve this.
We use a number of tools to perform automated accessibility tests, but this is just one aspect of our testing procedure. Being automated, these tools are not as reliable as expert evaluation. Pages are also tested in a variety of screen reading applications.
Background, text, and colour
Careful use of text colours, size and background colours can help people with a range of visual impairments. Here's what we have done:
Colours
Our site is usable by anyone with colour deficient vision. We've checked the site's font and background colour to ensure there are no combinations against the different colour blindness conditions and ensured that all information is still clear.
We have designed all pages on our website so that all information that is conveyed with colour is also available without colour.
Font and text size
While we have used clear, legible font for all text and headings. In the Firefox browser, select View, then Text Size, and then choose increase, or decrease.
Style sheets
This site uses cascading style sheets (CSS) for visual layout. Where possible, we have also made our website navigable, usable, and readable if your browsing device does not support style sheets.
Non-text elements
Providing alternatives for non-text elements gives visually impaired and screen-reader users wider access to our website.
Images, videos, and other non-text elements
We have made it possible to use our site without having to view graphics or images. All non-text elements, such as images, animations, symbols, audio, video, and multimedia have text equivalents. We have done this by providing descriptive alt attributes for them. Purely decorative graphics or formatting images have empty alt attributes.
Scripts
Our website uses JavaScript to improve usability and the online shopping experience. To help you use the site, we have created alternative non-JavaScript pages for the most critical pages.
Links and navigation
Structuring a website so it is simple and streamlined to use helps to improve the experience for all. For example, placing page items in a logical order and making the website easy to navigate helps people with visual impairments, motor deficiencies and cognitive disabilities.
Navigation
We have made navigation links consistent between pages throughout the site. The site is also fully accessible using only the keyboard and can be navigated with scripting disabled.
Pop-up windows
Our website does not use pop-up windows unless they are appropriate. Acceptable cases, for example, are when it is important to see the browser window you have just navigated from in the background.
Forms and tables
Clearly labelled tables help readers to understand the content on a page and to fill in content into correct form fields.
Frames
Although there are a limited number of critical pages on this site which use frames, we try not to use frames as they are a barrier to accessibility. Any frames which we do use have descriptive titles to help screen readers to make sense of the content of the page.
Tables
We do occasionally use tables for lay-out, but we ensure we follow WCAG2.1 guidelines. This means tables do not have any structural mark-up for visual purposes and they make sense when presented in a linear way.