Accessibility statement

We aim to make this website accessible to all. We try to ensure all pages conform to WCAG 2.1 Level AA in line with the EU Accessibility Directive. Our accessibility statement below sets out this commitment and what we are doing to improve.

This website is run by Northamptonshire County Council’s Web and Digital Team. There should be no barriers for anyone who wants to use this website.

For example, you should be able to:

• change colours, contrast levels and fonts
• zoom in without the text spilling off the screen
• navigate most of the website using just a keyboard (including skip to content)
• navigate most of the website using speech recognition software
• listen to most of the website using a screen reader
• easily understand any content

Accessibility features

AbilityNet provides guidance about how to:

• make your mouse easier to use
• use your keyboard instead of a mouse
• talk to your device
• make your device talk to you
• make text larger
• change your colours
• magnify the screen

Listen to this site using Browsealoud

You can listen to the contents of this website being read aloud to you using the Browsealoud widget on the site.

Follow these steps:

1. To activate Browsealoud, click on the widget at the top of any page.
2. This will open a toolbar at the top right-hand side of the page displaying different options.

 

3. You can move the navigation bar by selecting the arrows and dragging the bar to where you would like it. You can use Browsealoud for the following:
• Text-to-speech
• Spoken and written translation
• Text magnification
• MP3 generation
• Screen mask
• Web page simplifier
• Customisable options

For further help and support on how to use Browsealoud, click on the question mark in the Browsealoud toolbar.

Our websites

This is the main Northamptonshire County Council website.

We host the following microsites that use the same platform and code base:

• Chester Farm
• Everdon Outdoor Learning Centre
• IASS Northants
• MaSC project
• Northamptonshire Baby Room
• Northamptonshire Heritage
• Northamptonshire Country Parks
• Northamptonshire Safeguarding Adults Board
• Stand Out Northamptonshire
• Superfast Northamptonshire

We also host the following directories and applications:

• Schools Directory
• Volunteering - Get Involved Hub
• Children and Families Service Finder
• Local Offer
• Registrations appointment booking service

Our online forms system is hosted by a third-party provider:

• Northamptonshire County Council online forms

How accessible this website is

We know some parts of this website aren’t fully accessible.

For example:

• some older Word and PDF documents aren’t fully accessible for people using screen readers
• our Planning section, in particular, contains lots of documents which are not accessible including scanned documents that won’t work for people using screen readers
• some of our third-party adverts contain motion without input from the person accessing the site
  

There are some issues we are aware of that are difficult to fix because of how our content management system works:

• some HTML pages are styled using inline styles rather than external stylesheets - this means any custom stylesheets you set up may not work on some of our pages
• our expandable images don't display alt text for screen readers -  we're working to fix this

Let us know if you can’t access parts of this website

We’re always looking to improve the accessibility of this website. If you find any problems that aren’t listed on this page, please email webteam@northamptonshire.gov.uk or call 0300 126 1000 and ask to speak to someone in the Web and Digital Team.

How we tested this website

We have carried out user testing with visually-impaired people on a number of our most important tasks. If you would like to take part in future user testing, please email webteam@northamptonshire.gov.uk.

We also monitor automated tests of our website using Siteimprove.

We work continuously with our developers to resolve issues and improve the accessibility of our websites.

Enforcement procedure

The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) is responsible for enforcing 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

Northamptonshire County 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 listed below.

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. By September 2020, 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. For more information about the accessibility regulations visit the Legislation.gov.uk website.

Issues with images, video and audio

Some of our images have missing or incorrect labels. We are working to correct this as an ongoing task.

Issues with interactive tools and transactions

We are aware that some internal applications and externally hosted systems do not comply with accessibility and usability standards. Some are old software that we cannot easily change.

We’ve assessed the cost of fixing all the issues with the sites listed below and believe that doing so now would be a disproportionate burden within the meaning of the accessibility regulations, largely due to our move to a unitary authority model in April 2021. We will work with suppliers to improve the accessibility of these sites as much as possible.

• ePayments
• Highway Fault Reporting - Fix My Street
• Street Lighting
• Library Catalogue
• Adult Learning courses
• Councillors – Committee Management Information System
• Blue Badge (visible disabilities)
• School Admissions
• Bus Passes for Older People
• Planning Maps
• Interactive Mapping
• School Vacancies
• Events Calendar
• Flood Toolkit
• Consultations
• Olympus Care Services
• Roadworks

Some parts of this site link to or use content provided by other websites and these are not always as accessible as our site. Examples of these are:

• YouTube videos
• Embedded tweets and Facebook posts
• Google maps
• share button from Add This

What we’re doing to improve accessibility

We continuously improve our website’s accessibility based on user testing and automated tests. We hold weekly accessibility meetings to measure our progress.

We also run mandatory accessibility training courses for our web content authors and promote the importance of accessibility using our internal communication channels.

We are speaking to our third-party suppliers about improving the accessibility of their products.

In April 2021, Northamptonshire’s existing county, borough and district councils will be replaced by two councils – one for the west of the county and one for the north. We will balance our efforts between making our existing website more accessible wherever possible and helping to ensure any new unitary website under our control is accessible to all.

This statement was prepared on 20 September 2019.