Accessibility

We strive to make our website as user-friendly and accessible as possible. To achieve this, we follow W3C accessibility guidance and the principles of Plain English. 

Help using our website

This website is run by Wokingham Borough Council. We want as many people as possible to be able to use this website. For example, that means you should be able to:

• Change colours, contrast levels and fonts
• Zoom in up to 300 percent 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 has advice on making your device easier to use if you have a disability.

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
• There’s a limit to how far you can magnify our maps

Ask for help using this website

If you need information on this website in a different format, email customerservice@wokingham.gov.uk.

We’ll consider your request and get back to you in 3 working 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 email customerservice@wokingham.gov.uk.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing  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 visiting us in person

We provide a text relay service for people who are D/deaf, hearing impaired or have a speech impediment.

Read our live chat and minicom services page to find out more.

Technical information about this website's accessibility

Wokingham Borough Council is committed to making its website accessible, in line 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 AA standard, due to the non-compliances listed below.

Issues with technology

• It's not possible for users to modify text spacing or line height. We will fix this as part of a planned upgrade to the website, which is due to be completed during 2022
• It's not possible for us to fix link text used for multiple different destinations. This is due to the use of third party software plugins that are not configurable by us 

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
• 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. During 2022, we plan to either fix these or replace them with accessible HTML pages
• 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 unless we determine that they represent a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations. 

Disproportionate burden

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, likely to be in 2021. 

How this website was tested

This website was last tested on 30 July 2020, using automated software. We tested our main website platform, available at www.wokingham.gov.uk.

What we're doing to improve accessibility

We regularly monitor the accessibility of this website using automated Quality Assurance software. We use this software to identify and fix any issues that arise.

We plan to provide an accessible HTML version of any new information as the primary source rather than using a PDF.

Preparation of this accessibility statement

This statement was prepared on 30 July 2020. It was last updated on 15 September 2020.