Accessibility statement for Arun District Council

This accessibility statement applies to www.arun.gov.uk.

We are aware that disabled people may have difficulty using our website and we want to do everything we can to help you whilst we make further improvements.

Feedback and contact information

If you find that you are unable to find or access any information on this website, please do get in contact with us.

Call our general enquiries line on 01903 737500

Contact our Minicom on 01903 732765

Follow this link to send us an email webmaster@arun.gov.uk

We aim to return all priority enquiries within one working day.

How accessible this website is 

We know some parts of this website are not fully accessible: 

  • the contrast options we have currently provided are not fully accessible and do not function at all within some areas of the website
  • there is an inconsistent link behaviour: some links open in new tabs, some open in the same tab and some of them are longer than you would expect
  • the navigation does not function consistently throughout the website
  • parts of this website are not viewable if you are outside of the UK.
  • most PDF documents and PDF viewers are not fully accessible
  • the video feeds of council meetings are not fully accessible
  • there are images on the website that cannot be magnified
  • the online appointment booking system is not fully accessible

Reporting accessibility problems with this website

We are always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems not listed on this page or think we are not meeting accessibility requirements, contact webmaster@arun.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 are not happy with how we respond to your complaint, contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS).

Technical information about this website’s accessibility

Compliance status 

Arun District 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 AA standard, due to the non-compliances and exemptions listed below.

Non-accessible content

A detailed audit of this website has been carried out and each page has been tested for the following areas. Each of these either directly or indirectly affects the accessibility of the website. 

  • Website Accessibility Errors Priority A
  • Website Accessibility Errors Priority AA
  • Website Accessibility Errors Priority AAA
  • Website Accessibility Errors for Screen Readers
  • Website Coding Errors that affect Search Engines
  • Website Coding Errors (W3C Standards)
  • Usability and Navigation Issues

In addition, a thorough manual evaluation with disabled people on different aspects of this website has been undertaken. If you would like a copy of the full accessibility report, please contact us.

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

Non-compliance with the accessibility regulations (WCAG 2.1)

Priority A

  • For data tables that have two or more logical levels of row or column headers, use markup to associate data cells and header cells.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A 1.3.1)
  • The interactive element a must not appear as a descendant of the a element.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A 4.1.1)
  • This button element is empty and has no accessible name.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A 4.1.2) 
  • This page uses nested tables, which do not make sense when read in a screen reader.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A F49) 
  • All onclick handlers should have an equivalent onkeyup or onkeydown handler.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A F54)
  • ARIA button, link, and menuitem must have an accessible name.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A 4.1.2)
  • Elements must only use allowed ARIA attributes.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A 4.1.2)

We aim to have these resolved by February 2023.

  • Some of our PDFs and MS Office documents don’t meet accessibility standards – for example, they may not be structured so they’re accessible to a screen reader.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A 4.1.2)

Priority AA

  • If you set any of the colours on the body or a elements you must set all of them.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 AA F24)
  • The CSS outline or border style on this element makes it difficult or impossible to see the dotted link focus outline.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 AA F78) 

We aim to have these resolved by February 2023.

Disproportionate burden

We believe that attempting to directly fix accessibility problems with some content would be disproportionate; this mostly relates to large complex documents and third-party systems.

This could be because they are too technically complex to change, have low usage but high costs to change, we may not own the source/copyright or we are unable to influence third party supplier development plans.

Historic PDF files

We have lots of large, complex historic PDF documents on our website. Some of these documents will take longer to remediate or convert into accessible HTML format. We predict that this work will take up to 18 months.

Planning document viewer

Our planning document viewer (URLs beginning with https://www1.arun.gov.uk/PublicViewer/...) is not accessible but changing this system would be a disproportionate burden.

The system is a module integrated into our corporate document management system and replacing it would mean replacing the whole document management system used internally across the council. This would be a massive undertaking and disrupt provision of many other services to our customers and back-office functions.

However, we are investigating alternative ways of providing this information.

Content that’s not within the scope of the accessibility regulations

General website content

Non-HTML documents published before September 2018 do not need to be accessible to meet current guidelines but we are aware that this may change and we are committed to providing alternative solutions in the interim.

AAA Standard

Some pages have the following issues that fail the 'AAA' standard of the WCAG Guidelines. This is not currently a requirement but we include as it would be good practice to eliminate these in the future:

  • Ensure that text and background colours have a 7:1 contrast ratio.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 AAA 1.4.6)
  • This page is hard to read for users with learning disabilities or reading disorders like dyslexia.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 AAA 3.1.5)
  • Avoid specifying a new window as the target of a link with target=_blank.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 AAA F22)
  • Link uses general text like 'Click Here' which doesn't explain link purpose.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 AAA F84)
The following issues may occur with screen readers:

iframe with title attribute doesn't work in some screen readers

input type=text with title attribute doesn't work in some screen readers

a element placeholder link with no event handler or href attribute doesn't work in some screen readers.

How this website was tested

This website was tested for compliance with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines V2.1 level A, level AA and AAA using a variety of software and extensive manual checking by Access by Design.

We also use an automatic checking software, Siteimprove, to scan our website. Manual testing is done using axe DevTools and Wave on an ad-hoc basis.

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We plan to identify and fix all issues, which fail the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines version 2.1 A, AA and AAA by January 2024.
We will update the accessibility statement when issues are fixed or when we expect them to be fixed. 

Issues that have been fixed
  • iframe and frame elements must have a title attribute.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A 2.4.1 Section 508 (2017) A 2.4.1) 
    • Fixed on 13 September 2022
  • alt text should not contain placeholders like 'picture' or 'spacer'.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A F30 Section 508 (2017) A F30)
    • Fixed on 13 September 2022
  • This page has words made of Unicode characters that look like English characters but are from another alphabet. This means screen readers are unable to pronounce these words correctly.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A F71 Section 508 (2017) A F71)
    • Fixed on 14 September 2022
  • Identify row and column headers in data tables using th elements, and mark layout tables with role=presentation.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A F91 Section 508 (2017) A F91)
    • Fixed on 14 September 2022
  • Headings should not be empty.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 AA G130 Section 508 (2017) AA G130)
    • Fixed on 13 September 2022
  • Several links on a page share the same link text, but go to different destinations.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 AAA 2.4.9)
    • Fixed on 14 September 2022
  • All fieldset elements should be labelled with legend elements.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A H71 Section 508 (2017) A H71)
    • Fixed on 28 September 2022
  • This element uses JavaScript to behave like a link. Links like this cannot be tabbed to from the keyboard and are not read out when screen readers list the links on a page.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A F42 Section 508 (2017) A F42)
    • Fixed on 28 September 2022
  • Each a element must contain text or an img with an alt attribute.
    • (fails under WCAG 2.1 A F89 Section 508 (2017) A F89)
    • This issue has not been replicated since the initial audit.
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Preparation of this accessibility statement

The statement was prepared on 4 September 2022. It was last reviewed on 13 October 2022.

The website was lasted tested on 22 August 2022.

The test was carried out by Clive Loseby and his team of disabled testers at Access by Design using SortSite - accessibility checker and validator. 

The full audit, along with this Accessibility Statement, was prepared and produced by Clive Loseby, Access by Design.

If you wish for a copy of the audit please contact us.